


The Ties That Bind Job

by CatKing_Catkin, Telaryn



Series: Ties that Bind [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Leverage
Genre: Breaking the Masquerade, Canonical Character Death, Coma, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Human Experimentation, Hunted Vampires, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Major Character Injury, Mistaken Identity, Near Death Experience, Pathos, Siblings, Team Bonding, Twins, Vampires, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Called out on Kung Fu Monkey (http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2012/08/leverage-501-very-big-bird-job-post-game.html) and responsible for hundreds of thousands of words of follow-up fic - this is the epic that started it all!</p><p>While investigating a drug ring in South Boston, Angel and Faith cross paths with the Leverage team. Mistaken identities and shared pasts lead to both sides teaming up to take down the bad guys. Along the way, the team learns about vampires, and the Eliot!Whump escalates well into the red zone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Coma

**Author's Note:**

> An epic tale, marrying a plot bunny of mine with a plot bunny of my daughter's. The family that fics together...*g*

_Coma…_ The word kept echoing through Nate’s mind as he jogged up the steps of the Boston Medical Center. Eliot Spencer in a coma – it wasn’t something his brain was prepared to accept. The man was the damn energizer bunny when it came to taking a licking. The worst beating Nate had ever seen him take hadn’t kept Eliot down for more than a few hours.

“Hardison!” The hacker was waiting for him as he stiff-armed his way through one of the lobby’s few manual doors. “What do we know?”

Hardison fell into step with Nate as they headed for the elevators. “Ambulance found him in one of those warehouses he was checking out. Bruises, scrapes, probable concussion, three broken ribs, a broken hand…”

Nate pulled up short, turning to gape at the younger man. Acknowledging Nate’s shock, Hardison continued, “Multiple puncture wounds that might be bite marks, and massive blood loss.” For the first time, Nate registered just how uncharacteristically concerned the hacker was. “It’s not good, man. They’ve got him listed in critical condition.”

Nate pushed the call button almost reflexively, mind already wrestling with the problems and possibilities that would be waiting for them upstairs. “He’s not in ICU, is he?”

“Naw, man,” Hardison said – his drawl more pronounced than usual from the stress. “They’re holding him in a private room under the name ‘Lindsey McDonald’.”

The chime of the elevator arriving was the only thing that kept Nate moving forward. “Lindsey who?” he asked as Hardison pushed him into the cab. Hardison pushed for the fourth floor, and waited for the doors to slide shut before answering Nate’s question.

“Lindsey McDonald. It’s the name he was signed in with.”

Nate shook his head, trying to shuffle through what Hardison was telling him. “That’s not one of his usual aliases.” Then the rest of what the hacker had said finally registered. “Wait. Who signed him in? You said he was in a coma.”

“That’s where it gets interesting,” Hardison said, showing Nate the screen of his smart phone. “Meet our Good Samaritan.” The picture of a dark haired young woman in her late twenties appeared on the screen. “Called 911, stayed with Eliot all the way in through admitting.”

“She signed him in?” Nate asked, studying the picture. There was something disturbingly familiar about the image. “Who is she?”

Hardison shook his head. “No idea. Sophie’s working her, but no joy when I came downstairs to wait for you.”

The elevator doors slid open, cutting off any further speculation. Nate let Hardison take the lead, following him down a crowded hallway to a room at the end of a side corridor. He knocked twice on the door before pushing it open. “Just us!” he called out.

It was a private room, but small. Hardison moved in far enough to make room for Nate, who took in the scene at a single glance. Sophie was off to his right, looking very upset. Parker was curled up in a chair in the corner, hugging herself so tightly it looked as though she was trying to squeeze herself out of existence.

Eliot was in the bed, hooked up to enough tubes and monitors to cause Nate to break out in a cold sweat.

On the far side of the bed stood a tall, dark-haired man in an expensively tailored suit, over a round-collared shirt. In his shadow was the woman in Hardison’s picture. Nate glanced at the hacker, but he shrugged – clearly as in the dark as his boss as to the identity of the man.

“Nate,” Sophie said, stepping smoothly into the conversational breech, “this is Mr. Angel. He runs a legal firm in Los Angeles. And this,” she gestured at the young woman, “is Faith.”

_Lawyer…_ Nate gave the man a second look – his brain immediately rejecting the designation. _If he’s a lawyer…_ His attention shifted to Faith, and he barely smothered a gasp of surprise. _That face…_ He’d definitely seen it before, and the memory twisted his heart in his chest.

“Just Angel,” the man said, bringing Nate’s attention back to the larger picture in front of him. “Not mister.”

“What does a law firm from California want with something like this?” Nate asked. _Focus, dammit!_ His responses were off – he was still too rattled to project the sort of belligerent defensiveness people would expect in this situation. Faith’s presence wasn’t helping things; Nate found his attention constantly drifting away from Angel to zero in on her.

Angel studied him for a moment before responding. “Answer me something first. What is your connection with this man?” He gestured at Eliot.

Before Nate could shuffle through his options and come up with a safe, yet appropriate response, Faith touched Angel on the arm. “Call me.” She pushed to her feet and walked towards Nate – heading for the door.

He started to step out of her path, and then stuck his hand out in obvious invitation for her to stop. “Nathan Ford.”

This close, it was almost impossible to keep his reactions in check. He did know her – but the eyes that met his were from at least two complete lifetimes ago. _Possibly three,_ he thought as she gripped his hand and pumped it twice. “Faith.” The smile she flashed showed hints of humor, liberally laced with suspicion.

Nate waited a moment, then gave her his most charmingly persuasive smile. “You have a last name?”

She let go his hand, but her smile never faltered. “Sure do.” Stepping around him, she continued out the door. Nate didn’t turn to watch her go; he had the information he was looking for, and the implications were more than he was prepared to handle right this second.

“Mr. Ford.” Angel’s voice brought him back to the problem at hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Nate’s grin widened. Manic energy flooded through his body – the kind of rush that typically preceded his most reckless, and ultimately most effective behavior. “Don’t see where I have to, Mr. Angel. You’re not the police. We’ve only got your word that you’re an attorney, and even then the last time I looked Boston was a long way from California.” He stepped forward, deliberately putting himself in front of his teammates. _You and me, big guy,_ he thought. _Just you and me._

Angel was silent for a long moment. “It’s not Mr. Angel, Mr. Ford. Just Angel.” His gaze ticked down to Eliot, then back to rest on Nate again. “And I never said I was an attorney.”  
*******************************************  
 _That was interesting,_ Faith thought, shrugging up the collar of her leather jacket as she strode away from the hospital. She’d known the job wouldn’t end up as simple as Angel had tried to sell it to her – they never did. Finding Lindsey McDonald the victim of a vamp attack however, and then running into Father Nate was a little higher on the wacky scale than she’d expected.

_Old homestead, moron,_ she thought, shoving her hands in her jacket pocket against the cold. _Makes sense you’d run into at least one familiar face along the way._

She would have never bet it was going to be his. Father Nate (no last names, please) had been a part time counselor at the Belmont Center, where Faith had spent time in the mid nineties. She hadn’t been lucky enough to get him herself, but among the girls on her floor even the hardest cases liked Father Nate. He talked straight with his charges – never making them feel stupid or worthless. The grapevine swore he’d run the streets of South Boston in his youth, which gave him a credibility most of the other counselors lacked.

_Didn’t hurt how easy he was on the eyes._ Faith smirked. _Still is._

She walked another block, and her mind drifted inevitably back to the job and the reason why Angel had convinced her to come. Orpheus – a brutal, enchanted narcotic developed by the supernatural underworld of Los Angeles – had made its way east. Angel was certain a major distribution hub was getting ready to mobilize in South Boston, and wanted to do whatever he could to stop that from happening.

He’d turned to Faith primarily for her availability and knowledge of the area. The fact that she’d experienced the effects of the drug first hand was a bonus that definitely outweighed the somewhat dated nature of her intel.

_Need to go back and finish checking out those warehouses,_ she thought, turning down a side street. _Then meet Angel back at the hotel._ Thoughts of the suite of rooms Angel had booked for them made her smile. She was getting paid for her work these days, which was nice, but Faith still would have had problems shelling out the kind of money it took to acquire the five star digs Angel was accustomed to now.  
***********************************  
Angel’s attention kept sliding back to the unconscious Lindsey. He couldn’t work out how it had happened. Maybe Lorne had lost his nerve at the last second. _More likely that he had one last, ridiculously obscure spell in reserve to save his life._ Maybe none of his wilder theories were true – maybe Lorne had shot him, and maybe he’d just survived.

Lindsey had always been persistent that way.

It was him. Even Faith had agreed that it was, and she’d only ever met the man once. The hair was a bit longer, the face a bit more weathered. _Definitely Lindsey McDonald, though._

He forced himself to look away from the bed, and back at Nathan Ford – clearly the de facto leader of Lindsey’s band of friends and supporters. The man didn’t like him – that much was obvious beneath his worry for Lindsey.

Angel glanced at the bed again. Personally, he couldn’t muster the energy to be too worried about the man. Lindsey had definitely survived death more times than any human should really have been able to, and surviving vampire attacks was almost a talent. That said, Angel had seen plenty of men weaker than Lindsey come back from worse.

Nate had mistaken him for a lawyer.

If only he knew how tragically ironic that was.

It hadn’t taken much in the way of strings – or cash – to secure Lindsey in a private room. Angel checked around the space to distract himself from the hostile looks Nathan Ford was periodically sending his way. It wasn’t a large room, though, and here and now it was crowded with Nate and people he assumed were the man’s…employees? _Partners? Friends?_

_Friends,_ he decided, noting the way the brunette hovered over Lindsey. The young black man who had gone to the lobby to retrieve Nate had retreated to the corner near where the small blond girl had hidden herself. He alternated between fidgeting and touching the blonde’s shoulder… _for reassurance?_

_He’s the leader,_ Angel decided – his attention refocusing on Nate. _No question._ The others deferred to him automatically – Ford fielded questions from the medical staff that drifted in and out of the room at semi-regular intervals, and demanded answers with equal confidence. Angel could sense the man’s worry for his friends, but he never let it distract him from the job at hand.

_So why’d Faith bolt like that?_ She’d never been shy around authority figures, but her reaction to Ford had been…perplexing, to say the least. Not quite hostile, but she’d certainly been eager to get out of the room.

Angel’s memory finally obliged him by flipping a card. Faith had lived here, hadn’t she? _Born and raised, before she was Called._ She’d filled him in on her history in bits and pieces, during some of their talks sitting on opposite sides of bulletproof plastic. That was part of the reason he’d asked for her help in the first place, after all.

An Orpheus ring was something to be dealt with quickly. Faith was as tough as him, if not tougher, and she knew the area. _Get in, get out, quick and clean, nice and neat._ That was how he’d hoped it would go, at least. Bar Lindsey getting there first and flushing the vamps out of hiding, that was how it would have gone.

His plan had been for Faith to come in the front, shock and awe, giving him a chance to attack from the rear. It had all quickly gone to dust in favor of saving Lindsey from the dozen or so vampires already in the process of kicking his ass. Between them, they’d staked a few vamps, killed a few demons, and come out with some of the Orpheus. Unfortunately, the added chaos of protecting a badly wounded civilian had meant that Faith allowed a few of the vampires to slip past her and get out with what they had left of the drug.

Even if she had been helping someone like Lindsey, Angel couldn’t stop himself from being proud of her. That mercy, that care, was a mark of how far Faith had come.

Lindsey McDonald would live.

_At least long enough to answer some questions._  
*********************************  
Nate was not having a good night. _Bite marks, for God’s sake!_ He glanced at the thick white dressing on Eliot’s neck again, and barely suppressed a shudder of revulsion.

He hated hospitals – hated them. They all did in varying degrees, but the rest of them had never stood trapped behind a pressboard door with a flimsy circular window, watching someone they loved die while doctors and nurses raced around. Tonight was not going to be the night they felt what he’d felt, he was not going to have that happen again…

He’d gotten by with less sleep before, but never while trying to deal with the remains of his nervous, panicky team. Parker was almost literally climbing the walls. And Mr. Angel wouldn’t stop staring at him…

_Some room to breathe would be a good start,_ he decided finally. The hospital room wasn’t nearly big enough for the five of them and the stranger all in black.

“All right, everyone,” he said, raising his voice to cut through the low, nervous babble. They stopped talking immediately, looking up at him. The fear in their eyes, the panic and the uncertainty cut Nate to the quick.

_Yes._ He needed them out of here.

“All right,” he repeated. “I think we can safely say that collectively, we’re not doing any good here.” He held up a hand as Parker opened her mouth to protest. “This is not a big room, and there’s nothing we can do that isn’t already being done. We also have a client whose needs are not being met.”

They knew what he was getting at, and he anticipated their next reaction.

Their next reaction was to slide suspicious sidelong glances towards Mr. Angel.

“Of course, we all want to know what’s happening with our friend,” Nate continued smoothly, “so I propose that we stay here in shifts. That way, at least a couple of us can catch up on our sleep and…and…and do something constructive, all right?” _Something better than standing around here worrying the doctors._ “Sophie, Parker?”

The women nodded. Nate returned the gesture – one professional to two others. “Keep in touch,” he added, absently touching his ear – a silent assurance that he and Hardison would keep the lines open. Sophie and Parker understood. Nate knew that he didn’t need to remind Sophie to keep working on getting whatever she could out of Mr. Angel. His arrival had frustrated her previous attempts to get anything concrete, and Sophie had always been persistent that way.

She still looked reluctant, and Parker and Hardison were almost openly hostile to the idea. Nate understood. They’d become a remarkably tightly knit little band over the last couple of years; he’d noticed it, even if they hadn’t. Their first instinct now when crisis loomed was to draw closer together, when two years ago they would have raced off in separate directions.

They trusted him to do what was best for the team, however, and he knew that they couldn’t think of a better plan.

Parker unwrapped herself, slid off her chair and sidled closer to Hardison, close enough for the hacker to throw an arm around her shoulders and give her a one-armed squeeze. There was more emotion in the simple gesture than Nate would have thought possible. Sophie stayed back, but Nate could read her like an open book by now and he knew that tucked away inside Sophie Devereaux, some poor woman whose name he’d never known was falling apart.

“Hey, man, look,” Hardison said, the second they were clear of the room and heading down the hall. “Y’know you make sense an’ all, Nate, but I…I can’t just go sit on my hands, man, I just can’t…”

“I know,” said Nate softly. “I just…”

Hardison nodded, and Nate knew he didn’t have to finish. His hacker understood, and allowed Nate a minute to pull himself together.

“Lucky for you,” Nate continued once he had, “part of the reason I pulled you out first is that I need you to do something for me.”

Hardison perked up immediately. “Yeah? What are we talkin’ here? Surveillance on the warehouse? Background checks on Batman and Batgirl?”

Nate waved a hand absently. “Little of this, a little of that. We’ll go back to my place. The coms will still work at that range, won’t they?”

He’d asked the question deliberately. Despite the panic and fear weighing so heavily on all of them, Hardison managed to pull together his patented “you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me-I’m-downright-offended-that-you-have-so-little-faith-in-me” look.

It cheered Nate up ever so slightly to see that his team was still in the game.  
*****************  
The woman called Sophie was good at what she did, but Angel knew there was no better defense against a talented grifter than a lifespan of two hundred and fifty plus years.

He took pity on her soon after Ford’s departure, deciding to leave the two women to their grief and worry. Aside from Lindsey, the two people Angel was most concerned with – Faith and Nathan – were gone. And as far as Lindsey himself was concerned, there was no way the man was getting out of the hospital without somebody noticing him.

His final consideration was that it was getting on to dawn, and he didn’t really feel like being stuck in the hospital all day. _Back to the hotel, then._ Hopefully to find Faith alive, well, and unbitten.  
**************************  
Sophie watched him go. She waited until the mysterious Mr. Angel had closed the door behind him before glancing at her teammate.

Parker nodded.

Sophie nodded in return.

The thief got to her feet, arms still folded tightly across her chest, and followed Angel – leaving Sophie alone to guard the injured Eliot.

He was down the hall, waiting for an elevator when she left the room, so Parker made a beeline for the nearest stairwell. It was blessedly empty – some times of the night were just that late, even for hospitals.

Without preparation or preamble, Parker clambered up onto the stair rail, took a moment to find her center, then leapt off into the open air – letting herself plummet towards the ground floor.

No harness protected her this time – no exuberant cry of delight filled the space around her – but Parker still relished the feeling of uncontrolled, breathless abandon that overcame her when falling from such a height. It was almost as if all the troubles and anxieties and bad feelings that had piled on her in the last few hours suddenly couldn’t keep up.

For the span of a half-dozen heartbeats, Parker was free.

She landed lightly on all fours on the very bottom floor. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she got to her feet just in time for every bit of trouble and anxiety she’d tried to outrun to land on her head and nestle back into her brain.

_Hardison – twitchy and sad and not knowing what to do._

_Sophie – pretty face twisted up with worry._

_Eliot – bandaged and bloody in his hospital bed._

_Nate – trying to be the leader like he always was, and trying not to show how scared he was, and trying his best like he always did._

Parker shook her head to dislodge the bad pictures. She had a job to do now, something more than sitting on her hands and trying not to look at Eliot. It was a quick job, but it was a job – and that made all the difference.

She opened the door to the lobby and ducked out, trying to act like the team kept telling her “natural” was. She’d only just started for the door to the outside, when a ‘ding’ sounded behind her, and she heard the elevator doors opening.

Parker held position, facing away from the elevators. Looking over her shoulder would raise too much suspicion – Mr. Angel already knew what she looked like. The doors in front of her were translucent, however, and the darkness outside turned them into a perfect mirror. Parker made full use of the effect, trying to see if the man was following her out.

To her amazement, the brightly lit lobby behind her was completely empty.

Startled, Parker quickened her pace – heading towards the doors as she reviewed events in her mind.

He didn’t get on the elevator until after she’d gone for the stairwell. The hospital didn’t have that many floors, and it couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for her to hit the ground, whereas an elevator should have taken at least a minute, assuming it had even started at the same time as her. Doubtful, when you considered the performance capabilities of the average hospital elevator.

She couldn’t have missed him.

She just couldn’t have missed him.

The doors in front of Parker slid open as she approached, then she was out in the parking lot. The sun was just starting to rise, barely visible over the tops of the Boston skyscrapers, but bright enough to find the car she’d seen Angel getting out of when she and Sophie had first arrived at the hospital.  
*******************************  
Angel had no idea why the blonde girl was following him, but the blonde girl was definitely following him.

He’d been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt when she’d come out of the hospital room so soon after him, especially when she hadn’t immediately joined him at the elevators.

Besides, he wasn’t sure if it could really be counted as “following” if she reached his destination before he did. _Maybe she just needed some air,_ he told himself. He’d practically smelled how emotionally fragile she was earlier, after all. Maybe the stress and the worry had finally gotten to be too much for her.

_No._ She was following him, and she was very good at it. That was definitely his car she was heading towards.

Angel watched, arms folded, as she picked the lock, scooted into the passenger’s seat, and opened the glove compartment. Judging by the way she kept checking the side and rear view mirrors, she was expecting him to show up at any second.

He almost smiled, before laying a heavy hand on the girl’s thin shoulder.

Startled, she shrieked loud enough to wake the whole hospital, before rounding on him and beating ineffectually at his chest and kicking at his shins. Angel easily caught her wrists and shoved her lightly away.

“That’s my car,” he said, folding his arms again.

To her credit, the girl immediately adopted a convincing look of surprise. “O-Oh,” she stammered. “Um…is it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

She folded her arms awkwardly across her chest, and averted her gaze. “I…I was just so upset…about Eliot that I…I was acting out. Yes. I was acting out because I was upset about Eliot and I…have control issues. I feel that I don’t have enough control over my life, and so I steal things. Um…”

Another man might have mistaken her stammering and her awkwardness for just what she claimed was its source – anxiety and worry for her friend. Angel, however, knew people. It was part of the reason he’d lived the way he had for as long as he had. He knew people, and he knew that this girl, however worried she was about Lindsey, was still lying through her teeth.

He also knew that she had just lifted something from his pocket.

Almost as if on cue, she looked down at the stake in her hand as if she honestly didn’t remember stealing it. “Oh. Um…” Again with the stammering, then she stepped a little closer to him and held it out. “So…either you hunt vampires, or you’re building a really tiny fence.”

Angel moved to take the stake back, and then he took another look at her.

She was thin as a reed – easily half the size of Lindsey or Nate. Her thin, pale face with its wispy blond hair only made her look more like a little girl – lost, alone, and entirely out of her depth.

He let his hand fall to his side.

“Tiny little fence,” he said, completely deadpan. “They’re all the rage in LA right now. Why don’t you try it yourself?”

She looked down at the stake in surprise, and then back up at him. Angel managed to smile at her, then he got in his car, revved up the engine, and drove away as the clock ticked down to full sunrise.

Parker watched him go. Then she pulled her GPS reader out of her pocket and checked for a signal.

_Yep._ Mr. Angel’s black ’67 Plymouth had just passed the four way intersection around the corner.

“Thanks for the stake,” she murmured, testing its weight in her hand.


	2. Knowledge Equals Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Background checks and confrontations - while Eliot is still down for the count, each side investigates the other, with some surprising results.

They’d barely cleared the door to Nate’s apartment – Hardison immediately peeled off and headed for the bank of monitors on the wall.

“All right, man, what are we talking here? Surveillance? Background checks? What?”

Nate took a deep breath, trying to will his heart to slow down. “Give me everything you’ve got on Faith Lehane – L, E, H, A, N, E.”

The hacker did a double-take. “You know her?”

The weight of memories pressing down on him again, Nate nodded. “Just do it, Hardison. Please.”

After starting at him for another moment, Hardison sat down and pulled his laptop closer. With all eyes finally off him, Nate felt some of the tension he’d been holding so close drain out of him. He forced himself to head into the kitchen. Dawn was close, and even though he didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry, he knew from hard experience that opportunities for food and drink were likely to be few and far between in the coming hours.

He quickly banished thoughts of the bottle he had hidden in one of his upper cabinets. Tempting as it was, now was definitely not the time.

To distract himself from the alcohol and Hardison’s mutterings as he worked his magic, Nate turned his thoughts to the young woman who’d so unexpectedly sauntered back into his life. He’d been in seminary when he’d first laid eyes on Faith, helping the counselors at a local mental health hospital work with their teenage residents.

He’d recognized her then too, but he’d never been in a position to get closer and find out her whole story. She hadn’t been assigned to his care, and asking too many questions about the other patients at Belmont tended to be looked on by the other counselors as violating doctor-patient confidentiality.

 _Be honest,_ he chided himself. _You didn’t want to find proof that she was Ellie’s daughter._

“Aw, hell no,” Hardison grumbled, distracting Nate from his memories. The hacker’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard.

Nate grabbed a bagel for himself and threw it in the toaster. “What’ve you got?”

Hardison glanced up at him. “Not sure. Some pretty serious firewalling going on – somebody doesn’t want us taking too close a look at your girl.”

 _That is interesting,_ Nate thought – momentarily distracted from his stroll down memory lane. The Faith he’d known wasn’t anyone he would have ever connected with the sort of computer safeguards that could frustrate Hardison. “Can you get through?”

Hardison shot him a disgusted look. “You did not just say that.”

His bagel popped up at that moment. Without thinking, Nate snatched it out of the toaster, burning his fingers in the process. Swearing under his breath, he tossed it on a plate and went to sit on the couch.

It took a few minutes before the chaotic blur of data streaking across the monitors in front of him began to resolve into something coherent. “Gotcha, you sorry sons of…” Hardison’s voice trailed off as he seemed to remember Nate was listening.

“What do we know?” Nate asked – even though he was already scanning the readouts.

Hardison got to his feet, remote in hand. “Faith Lehane,” he said, pointing to the center picture in the array – which happened to be a mug shot.

 _That’s more like what I expected,_ Nate thought. “What did she do?”

Hardison snorted. “Well, according to this she’s supposed to be serving a life sentence for killin’ a bunch of people.” He paused. “Emphasis on supposed to be.”

“She doesn’t act like somebody who’s on the run,” Nate said – his brief encounter with Faith swirling through his mind. “What about our friend – Mr. Angel?” He knew he was being petty by continuing to stress the designation, but he couldn’t seem to care enough to stop.

Hardison nodded. A moment later, the screen split – Faith’s data moving to one side, and the corporate logo of Wolfram and Hart, Attorneys at Law filling the other. “Mr. Angel – that’s some crazy weird shit all on its own.” He looked at Nate. “What do you want first?”

“Stay on Faith,” Nate said. “You said her information was protected. Any idea who?”

Hardison shook his head. “Pretty serious stuff, but it doesn’t look like it’s got any government fingerprints on it. Recent too – either that, or they’re keeping an eye on their work. The encryption algorithms they’re using are pretty new.”

Nate had already moved on to the screen showing Faith’s vital statistics. “Hardison, are those right? Date of birth?”

“Yeah, man.” Hardison looked over the same screen. “Date of birth, December 14, 1980. Why?”

Nate’s jaw dropped – numbers suddenly spinning in his head. _You never did the math._ He’d figured based on Faith’s age that it would have been a close thing, but he’d never checked deeper. _They wouldn’t have let you see her file, but you could have at least asked. Idiot!_

“Nate!”

He blinked, realizing that Hardison had been trying to get his attention. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

“About what, man?” The hacker looked worried, and Nate tried to bring himself more under control. They were all on a hair trigger – no point in making things worse with his suspicions. “You’ve got that look.”

Nate got to his feet, focusing on the collage of Faith’s history splayed in front of him. It was easier than facing Hardison right now. _Where do I even start?_ He scrubbed one hand across his face, trying to find the words to frame what seemed on the surface like such an outrageous idea.

“Faith…” He swallowed hard – afraid to admit his current theory out loud. Hearing it spoken would make it real, and if it was real, it was something he wouldn’t be able to ignore, control, or explain away.

“I think she’s my daughter.”  
*************************  
Angel stepped off the elevator and heard the muffled thump of an overworked bass coming from the direction of their suite. _Guess she’s home,_ he thought, smiling in spite of himself.

Faith was dancing in the middle of the suite’s common area – wild, bouncing movements in perfect time with the music abusing the stereo’s high-end speakers. Angel waited at the door until one of her spins brought him into her field of vision. Smiling brightly, she danced over to the system and shut it off.

Angel closed the door, giving his ears a chance to recover from the assault. Sweating, and still breathing hard from her exertions, Faith swept an open water bottle off the nearby wet bar, and drained it in a single, protracted gulp. “How’re things at the hospital?” she asked once she’d finally come up for air.

“Same,” he said, joining her at the bar. “The doctors are figuring it’ll be at least tomorrow before he wakes up. Lots of talk about how lucky he is to be alive.” _They don’t know the half of it._

Faith snorted – Angel suspected she’d been thinking along similar lines.

“You think he’ll talk?” she asked finally. “Once he wakes up? We find out who’s running this thing, it’s our best chance of figuring out where they went with the rest of the stash.”

That was the plan, as far as Angel was concerned. “He’ll talk,” Angel said. “If there’s one thing I can count on with Lindsey, it’s his sense of self-preservation.”

“And,” Faith interjected smoothly, picking up his line of thought, “based on what we pulled off him he’s probably pissed somebody off in a majorly fatal way. We can use that.”

“Did you go back to the warehouse?” Angel asked. “Or just come back here?” He tried to shade the question so she knew he was okay with either course of action.

He needn’t have worried. “Place is clean. They must’ve gone back after we left and stripped it.”

Angel considered the implications. It was a set-back, but under the circumstances hardly unexpected. “Even with my car, my movements are going to be severely limited until dark,” he said finally. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, I’m thinking we hole up here and catch a few hours’ sleep. The hospital’s supposed to call if there’s any change in Lindsey’s condition.” He paused, thinking about Lindsey’s friends – particularly the combative Nathan Ford. “I want to get some background checks on his friends,” he said. “I wasn’t counting on that many people giving a damn about his health.”

Faith was silent for a moment – Angel could almost feel the memories as she grappled with them and decided how much she was willing to claim out loud. “Father Nate’s cool,” she said. “Couldn’t tell you about the rest of them, although the other guy seemed all right.”

 _Father..?_ Angel blinked in surprise, certain for a moment that he’d heard her wrong. “ _Father_ Nate?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know his last name before, but he was one of the counselors at a place I…stayed…when I was a kid. Before.”

She was starting to get that look – the look he always saw when talk brushed too close to her past. Angel valued the fact that she trusted him enough to share even some of the details of her childhood with him, but he never lost sight of the fact that her willingness to open up was a fragile thing. “That could explain why I didn’t like him,” Angel said, “but are you sure he’s a priest? He doesn’t act like any priest I’ve ever met.”

Faith laughed. “And that would be how many exactly? We’re talking the ones you didn’t gut for breakfast.” It was harsh, but Angel was forced to admit it was the truth.

“So why’d you skip out if you like the guy?” he asked finally. Her reaction at the hospital still bothered him. “You didn’t even admit you knew him.”

“He didn’t admit he knew me,” she countered, shrugging. “We weren’t close or anything. I knew him mostly by reputation, and the reputation was better than you’d expect for a place like that.” She paused. “Did he say anything about me after I left?”

Angel shook his head. “He didn’t say anything, really. Just threw his weight around a lot.” He conjured up a mental picture of Ford and reviewed it against what Faith had told him. “I just don’t see him as being a priest.”

“Or with a connection to our friend,” Faith added, drawing him back to the subject of Lindsey.  
************************************  
He’d forgotten completely about the coms.

Hardison didn’t need the earpieces, since he was still standing only three feet away. He whipped around so fast that his hand went reflexively to his neck as it cricked. “What?!”

Nate winced as Sophie’s reaction was suddenly loud in his ear. _“Daughter?”_

Parker’s response was just as loud a moment later. _“Huh?!”_

Then, as they had a chance to fully process what he’d said, the chatter suddenly filled his ears.

 _“But…but you and Maggie…she’s too old, Nate…”_ Sophie stammered.

“I hate to do Eliot’s job when my man’s on oxygen, but may I remind you all what happened the last time we let our own personal issues get in the way of a job?!” Hardison yelled – trying to make himself heard over the din.

 _“Daughter? Why does Nate have a daughter? Why didn’t we know that Nate had a daughter? And why is Nate’s daughter a crazy lady who works with a guy who builds little tiny fences in L.A.?”_ Predictably, that one was Parker.

The babble continued, in his ears and in front of his face as they all continued firing their questions and objections at him. _I’m just lucky Eliot’s in a coma,_ Nate thought. He really didn’t want to know what his hitter would have to say about this unexpected turn of events.

The noise over the network escalated, until Nate couldn’t take it anymore. Reaching up, he yanked the tiny device out of his ear. His arm was half-cocked, getting ready to hurl it against the nearest wall, when he managed to pull together some shreds of his self-control.

Lowering his arm with a supreme exertion of will, Nate managed to close his hand protectively around the device. Suddenly aware of how he must look to Hardison, he turned his back on the hacker and walked towards the kitchen.

“Ladies…ladies…Sophie!”

Supporting himself against the breakfast counter, Nate closed his eyes and listened as Hardison tried to talk the two women down. He didn’t blame any of them for being shocked, but they hadn’t even given him time to deal with the news himself. _Dammit Ellie…why didn’t you say anything?_

 _She might be my daughter._ It was terrifying to contemplate.

“He’s off-line for a minute,” Hardison was saying. “Just chill, okay?”

Taking a deep breath, Nate opened his eyes and turned back to face Hardison. The hacker was staring at him with wide, almost frightened eyes. “I’m sorry,” Nate said, before fixing his com in place again.

“All right,” he continued, addressing the team at large. “Big news, yes. I need you to understand, however, that this is as much a shock to me as it is to you. Even assuming Faith knows the truth, this is not likely to be a happy reunion.”

 _“Nate, you don’t know that,”_ Sophie said.

Nate sighed. “Sophie, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I need you to back off right now. Please. We have a client to worry about, and Eliot, and I have had approximately thirty fucking seconds to deal with the possibility that I might have a grown daughter.” Hearing his voice grow sharper again, he forced himself to stop talking.

The silence that followed was blissful. Nate met Hardison’s gaze, and realized something of what he was feeling must have shown itself. The hacker’s expression had shifted from fear of what Nate might do to an appreciation of what he was going through.

Nate softened in the face of that unconditional support. “I’m sorry.” Even though he was saying it to Hardison’s face, he knew Sophie and Parker would accept it for themselves as well.

 _“What do you want us to do?”_ Sophie again.

He thought for a second, trying to organize the chaos in his mind. “Parker, tell me you’ve got eyes on our mysterious Mr. Angel.”

_“Eyes no. I tagged his car though.”_

Hearing that, Hardison returned to his laptop. “Got it,” he told Nate after a few seconds and a half-dozen keystrokes. “He’s stopped at the Seaport Hotel.”

 _Nice place,_ Nate thought, picturing the hotel. Convenient to the warehouse district, but still the kind of place you’d expect to see a high-priced attorney from California staying. “Parker – are you inside or outside?”

There was a pause, then the thief said slowly, _“Inside.”_

Nate chuckled ruefully, shaking his head again. Parker’s caution in responding meant she was most likely using a more fluid definition of the word than most people expected. _Which probably means ductwork,_ he thought.

“Right idea,” he said, “but get out and find some place to meet us outside. We’re going in the front door on this one.” He nodded to Hardison, and the hacker started assembling his gear. “Sophie, meet us there.” He paused. “Eliot’ll be fine on his own for a few hours, and I’m going to need your intel on this one.”

_“I’ll be there.”_

Parker’s voice was the last they heard as he and Hardison left the loft.

 _“Do you still need an invitation if the place you’re trying to get into belongs to a vampire?”_  
******************************  
Angel paced the floor, listening to Connor’s report. “That is interesting. So he really was a priest, huh?”

_“Not necessarily. He was in the School of Theology at Boston College – on track for the priesthood. I just can’t find any evidence that he finished.”_

“What was his degree?” Angel paused at the bar, trying to reconcile what he was hearing with the man he’d met.

_“Degree looks like it predates his priest studies. Business and Financial Administration. Which fits with him working for IYS Insurance until a couple years ago.”_

He was distracted from asking Connor what had happened by Faith coming out of her bedroom. “Listen, Connor – fax me everything you’ve got, okay?”

_"You’ve got an email account, you know. I could send you everything I’ve dug up in about thirty seconds.”_

Angel sighed. “If I get through this, I promise I’ll let you teach me about the internet,” he said finally. “Until then, I think that’s one of the things I pay you for.”

_“We’ll talk.”_

“Bye, son.” Angel hung up the phone. Before he could say anything to Faith, the suite’s fax machine creaked to life.

Faith glanced at it. “Junior giving you hell again?”

Angel nodded, crossing the room to retrieve the sheets of paper as they emerged from the machine. “He dug up a lot on our merry band of adventurers.” He scanned the top two pages quickly, before passing them off to Faith. “Thieves and grifters for the most part. All except our elusive Father Nate, who apparently worked in insurance after washing out of priest training school.”

Faith snorted, looking more closely at the paper he’d handed her on Nathan Ford. “Wouldn’t have called that.”

“Here we go,” Angel said, finding the sheet with Lindsey’s picture on it. “Eliot Spencer?” Off Faith’s quizzical look, he said, “Lindsey.” He scanned down the rest of the page, stunned at what he was seeing. “Black ops, martial artist, wanted in over a dozen countries. This is nuts.”

“Pretty much guarantees he’s connected to our guys,” Faith said. “Even if we interrupted them double-crossing him, if he’s got that much in his background…”

A sharp series of knocks on the door to the suite interrupted her. Puzzling through who it might be, Angel exchanged a worried look with Faith before going to answer it.

In retrospect, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Nathan Ford and the majority of his team standing in the hallway. Ford met his gaze squarely. “We need to talk.”  
*******************************  
Nate thought for a second that Angel was going to refuse him entry. After a moment, however, the tall not-a-lawyer stepped back and gestured them inside.

“This is not a good idea.” Parker – quiet enough that Nate could only hear her over the coms. He ignored her, however, because Faith was standing at the other end of the suite’s large common area. He was used to her strong resemblance to her mother; that, plus Georgie’s last name had been what helped him make the connection to his past in the first place.

Now that he was looking at her in a different light, he found himself searching out any physical features that could be assigned to his own genetic heritage.

“What can we do for you, Father?” Angel asked, pulling Nate back from spilling every last one of his suspicions on the spot. He glanced over his shoulder at the other man, then back at Faith.

“You didn’t say anything at the hospital. I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

Faith shrugged, walking closer. “Hospitals and me – we really don’t mix.” She began circling – looking him up and down. Nate held his ground, even as he sensed the others pulling away from her. “Come a long way, padre. I like the scruff – it’s a good look for you.”

Nate tried desperately to ignore the obviously flirtatious tone in her voice. _Work the job,_ he reminded himself. Sophie’s romantic notions aside, the Faith he knew had been the hardest of hard cases. Her arrest record, and the evidence of a cover-up unearthed by Hardison definitely weighed his instincts on the side of caution.

You didn’t just stroll into a life like Faith’s and announce that you _might_ be her daddy.

“I’m actually not a priest anymore,” he said finally. “Never was. I left the seminary soon after we knew each other.”

“We know,” Angel interjected, drawing Nate’s attention away from Faith again. “Insurance?”

Now it was Nate’s turn to shrug. He turned to fully face Angel. “Quid pro quo, Mr. ‘I’m not an attorney’. You’ve had me checked out – probably all of us – fine. We did the same to you.” He glanced at his teammates for reassurance before fixing his gaze on Angel again. “Cards on the table. What are you doing in my town, why are you stepping in our case, and who do you think Eliot is?”  
***************************  
Parker hovered by the doorway and did her best to look menacing, although she noticed Faith was doing the same thing over by the window, and she was menacing enough to give Eliot a run for his money. Nate and Angel made no effort to keep their voices low…cards on the table, after all…and Parker could hear just fine.

She couldn’t pretend to understand, however…who was “Lindsey McDonald”, and why did Angel keep acting like he was Eliot? The drug ring she knew about. It was what had brought their client to them, and why Eliot had been at the warehouse in the first place.

But why had Angel and Faith gone there, too? Had the client hired them as well? She couldn’t have. Nate had said they both came from Los Angeles, and that was thousands of miles away.

 _Thousands of miles away in a place famous for being really warm and sunny._ Parker would have thought that would be a bad place to live for a vampire.

Nate, Hardison, and Sophie had all ignored her warning. She knew they thought that she was insane…functionally insane, yes, but still insane. And Parker knew full well that she often didn’t fit in with the rest of the world, didn’t work the way the rest of the world expected her to work.

But this was just logical.

 _People are supposed to cast reflections._ Mr. Angel did not cast a reflection. He’d also been in an awful hurry to get home before dawn, and his car windows had been tinted darker that was usual or safe. Parker couldn’t quite figure out why a vampire would have a stake in his pocket, but maybe other vampires didn’t like him either.

Nate, Hardison, and Sophie didn’t believe her, though, and so here they were in a vampire’s apartment. _With any luck, Faith will turn out to be his ensorcelled bride, just like in the movies._ Any second, they’d probably lunge and bite Nate, and that would be the end of it.

Faith was already acting a bit more predatory than Parker felt comfortable being around.

But none of her team believed her. Parker supposed she could understand why, but even so she knew that she was right. Angel at least was a vampire. It was the only explanation that made sense!

_Now to prove it to the rest of them…_

Trying her best to look as small, unnoticeable, and inedible as possible, Parker paced towards the refrigerator just off the suite’s living room.

Hardison, hovering close to Nate, was the only one who saw her move.

“What are you doing?” he murmured, again so softly that only the coms could register his voice.

Parker shushed him. She reached the kitchen and immediately ducked down behind the counter, the better to get at the refrigerator unnoticed.

“Parker!” Hardison hissed, a little louder and a little more urgently. Again, Parker shushed him. She eased the refrigerator door open and peered inside.

She only had a second before Faith appeared out of nowhere and slammed the door, but that second was enough for Parker to see a few plastic packs of blood – the sort she’d seen at the hospital – stacked on top of one another in the corner.

“Hey, blondie,” snapped Faith, diverting Parker’s attention away from this chilling discovery. “Anybody ever tell you that’s not polite?”

Parker nodded. “Um…yeah. Ah…I was…thirsty. Thirsty. Yeah.”

Moving too fast for Parker to catch another glimpse of the blood packs, Faith opened the door again, pulled out a can of soda, and lobbed it at her. “There.”

Parker managed a weak “thank you” and hastily retreated from the kitchen, Faith close on her heels.

Hardison shot her one of his patented “I-told-you-so-didn’t-I” looks, Sophie was wearing her “scandalized” look, and Nate was looking none too happy with the interruption.

“Parker,” he said, and the tone of his voice was almost scarier than her close encounter with Faith. “Time and place.”

Parker nodded meekly and settled herself as comfortably as possible. The pop and hiss of her soda as it opened it suddenly seemed far too loud.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker closes in on the truth about "Mr." Angel, but it's Nate who unexpectedly ends up with the proof.

Nate cast his thief one last threatening glance, and then returned his attention to Angel.

“Cards on the table” apparently didn’t mean the same thing for Angel as it did for the rest of the world.  So far, he had been quite free with his information.  None of it, however, was exactly relevant.  He was managing to answer all of Nate’s questions, without answering his questions at all.

_And the man claims to not be a lawyer._

To be fair, Nate was playing the same game on him.  His intent was to tell the man everything he could about his team…specifically Elliot…and what they did without actually telling him anything he could bring back home and use against them.

In other words, they were getting nowhere and they both knew it.

 _A liar’s greatest punishment is his inability to trust others_ , _or something to that effect._ He didn’t trust Angel.  Angel didn’t trust him.

But the fact of the matter was that they apparently had the same goals.  Angel’d had a purpose in sending Faith to that warehouse when he had, and he’d admitted that he was investigating a drug ring with her, which put him in line with what Nate and his people were looking into.

His interest in Eliot was both fascinating and a cause for some concern.  Mr. Angel seemed to mean them no harm as a whole, but Nate still couldn’t quite fathom his interest in their hitter.  Finally he told the not-attorney as much.

“Suffice it to say we’ve worked together in the past,” was the reply.  “And we’ve worked against one another.  My interest is that I had it on good authority he was dead.  Since he and I have never been the best of friends, I hope you can understand my concerns.”

“Well, whatever your thing with Eliot is…” Hardison cut in suddenly, “he’s one of us now, an’ y’know if you wanna get at him you’ll have to get at us an’ I’ll have you know…”

The sight of Hardison trying to inflate himself up like a puffer fish – trying to look tough, when in actuality he could still barely take a punch – was both amusing and a little touching.  Nate knew none of them liked the idea that someone with _real_ power might be after one of the team.  Angel’s “interest” in Eliot didn’t seem entirely negative or antagonistic, however, and so Nate was content to let the matter lie.

_For now._

 

Faith’s presence in the room was a continual distraction while he tried to deal with Angel.  Nate found himself watching her out of the corner of his eye – never directly looking at her, but never entirely looking away.  To make matters worse, he knew that she knew that he was staring.   _Nice job not looking suspicious_.

 

Unfortunately, all the staring meant that he wasstarting to notice things in her face and in her build that could be credited to him, and not to George or Ellie.

 

_Fuck._

 

For the moment, however, the bulk of Faith’s attention was focused on Parker.  The little thief hadn’t stayed sitting for long, and now she was pacing the apartment again.  Faith continually trailed after her, and by the nervous glances Parker kept shooting at her Nate knew that his teammate had a plan and that Faith was very deliberately keeping her from it.  It was a strange little dance that he knew was catching the attention of everyone in the room, but no one was saying anything so far.

 

As far as he could tell, Parker didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, so Nate attempted to return his attention to the business at hand.

 

“Since we…ah…appear to have the same job to accomplish, Mr. Angel, I think it might be best for all involved if we were to work together.”

 

He didn’t need to see the looks Hardison and Sophie were suddenly giving him.  Hardison had filled him in on Wolfram & Hart, Attorneys at Law, on the way over.  The phrase “Johnny Cochran is too moral to join” had come up at some point in the discussion.

 

Nate had never crossed paths with them, but he wasn’t surprised to learn that Hardison and Sophie had.

 

What tipped him in favor of an alliance, however dangerous, was the fact that the people running this drug ring had proven themselves willing enough and tough enough to defend their stash by mauling Eliot…Eliot, who he had seen take out three, four, five, sometimes _six_ guys at a time without breaking a sweat.

 

Their targets were clearly violent on a level only Eliot had the experience to cope with.  Nate hated to dwell on it, but he kept remembering Faith’s mug shot and rap sheet.   _She’s probably better equipped to handle this type of thing than the rest of us_.

 

“I think that makes sense,” said Angel evenly.  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.  “And if we are going to pool our resources, then I think the best course of action right now…”

 

“Hey, boss.”  Moving so fast that she appeared to simply blink from one end of the room to the other, Faith grabbed Angel by the upper arm and heaved him out of his seat.  “Got a sec?”

 

She hustled Angel towards the kitchen, just as a shaft of sunlight scythed through the room. Nate winced at the brightness – the suite was, for all its luxury, lit rather poorly and his eyes had adjusted to the gloom.  When his he was able to see properly again, he saw Parker, gripping the pull for the drapes in both hands and looking as sheepish as he had ever seen her outside a con.

 

“Hey, blondie,” called Faith.  Her smile was probably an attempt at “friendly”, but showed far too many teeth.  She made a beeline for Parker and, before Hardison or Sophie could interfere, had grabbed the thief by one arm and wrenched it behind her back.  “Seems to me like you’ve got a lot of excess energy to work off.  Matter of fact, so do I.  What’s say you and I go for a walk?”

 

“Faith!” called Nate and Angel at the same time.  Faith looked from one to the other, then scowled bitterly and released Parker – who promptly scurried over to hide behind Hardison.

 

Nate leveled his “Parker gaze” at the thief.

 

“Parker…” He left the sentence hanging, partly to cow Parker, and partly to try and keep himself in order.  The very last thing he needed to deal with right now was her insanity, which she’d seemed to have largely under control over the last few months. “What’s wrong?”

 

He did not add “with you”, because that wasn’t fair to her or to him.  The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, however, no matter how hard Nate tried to swallow them back.  He suddenly realized that he _did_ need her out of here.  He needed her to take a walk, before he said something he would regret for a long time to come.

 

 _Not with Faith._  Not with the murderess he’d first met in a mental clinic, who might be his daughter.

 

Parker shifted uncomfortably, staring down at her feet, as Hardison, Sophie, Nate, Faith, and Angel all stared at her.  She was the center of attention – _Parker’s perfect hell._

 

“I…um…I am upset,” she said nervously.  “Very upset.  About Eliot.  It makes me angry and frustrated that we left him there and so I…I was acting out.  Yes.  I was acting out because I was upset about Eliot and I…have control issues.”

 

He could see Hardison trying not to snort with laughter, and Sophie silently applauding.  Nate himself had to admit that it wasn’t a half bad performance.  Normal people might actually have mistaken her tentative lies for true anxiety.

 

Unfortunately, Nate was beginning to realize he could say with some certainty that Angel and Faith were no more normal than they themselves were.

 

Even so, she had just provided an “out” for all involved.  Parker could go back to Eliot, which Nate knew was her preference, without having to be within ten feet of Faith.  She and Nate could be away from one another for a few hours, and he could trust that Eliot was at least under guard.

 

He opened his mouth to agree with her.

 

Angel beat him to it.

 

“I think we can safely say that this meeting is adjourned,” he said, leaning on the kitchen counter and surveying them all in turn.  He nodded at Nate.  “As I was saying, Mr. Ford, at this point I agree pooling our resources is our only real option, but from what I understand the only one of you with any first-hand intel on the situation was Eliot.”

 

“True,” Nate admitted.

 

Angel nodded, at Nate and then at Faith.  “Faith, since you seem to have a bit of energy to burn yourself, why don’t you show him the place?”

 

Faith nodded – a touch reluctantly – and shot one last suspicious glance at Parker. “I dunno…”

 

Hardison and Sophie took the hint.  They promptly flanked Parker and made to shunt her out the door.

 

“We probably have left Eliot on his own for too long,” said Sophie.

 

“Yeah, yeah.  Plus, y’know, breakfast an’ all,” added Hardison.  He laughed a little too loudly to be believable, and clapped Parker on the back.  “Parker here gets twitchy when she doesn’t get her cereal, don’t ya?”

 

Parker nodded sullenly.  “Yeah.  Cereal.”  She was not looking at Faith or Angel, anymore.  She was looking round Hardison to stare fixedly at Nate.  As he watched her, she jabbed two fingers repeatedly into the side of her neck – all while jerking her head towards Angel.

 

The motion did not go unnoticed by Faith, who took a threatening step forward.  Each keeping one hand firmly on Parker’s shoulder, Hardison and Sophie stepped back.

 

Sophie cast a look over Parker and Hardison’s head towards Nate.  “Keep in touch,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “We’ll be all right.”

 

Nate nodded jerkily. He knew that Sophie didn’t understand – couldn’t understand – everything that was going on, but the fact that she was still willing to reassure him after the chaos of the last few hours and his own sporadic explosions of temper meant a lot.  He knew he’d been off his game, but the fact that she was still willing to follow his lead made him feel a bit more in control of the situation.

 

He hung back for a few minutes to hash out the details with Angel and Faith, and allow the other three a head start out of the area.

*******************************

“Woman, what the _hell_ …” cried Hardison in exasperation as the three of them walked out together into the late morning sunlight.

 

“Okay, you know what?” Parker snapped, rounding on him.  “I am _good_ at charades, and I was playing like my life depended on it because _it really did_. How many more ways can I mime that Mr. Angel and Faith are vampires?!”

 

Dead silence met this outburst, as Parker had known it would.  Hardison opened his mouth to protest.  Parker shushed him.  Sophie opened her mouth to protest in turn.  Parker, to her own amazement, shushed her.

 

For a moment, all three stood staring at one another in a silent, tense triangle.  Hardison was the first to break it, by tentatively clearing his throat.

 

“Um…I dunno all that much about Mr. Angel…’living dead’ isn’t exactly somethin’ that gets listed on the resume all that often…but if I may direct your attention to the lady walkin’ down the street with our fearless leader, I think I might have a counter-argument on at least one of our interlopers.”

 

Parker turned in the direction Hardison was indicating, in time to see Nate walk out into the late morning sunlight – Faith walking beside him.

 

Nate’s possible daughter did not appear inclined to burst into flames.  In fact, as Parker stared fixedly at her, the dark haired girl stretched luxuriantly in the light.

 

“Now, if she really is a vampire…” continued Hardison from behind her. “…then I would _love_ to get the name of her sun block.”

****************************

Parker’s shoulders slumped in apparent defeat.  Hardison relented, thinking suddenly that he’d probably been taking his own worry and anxiety out on the girl by teasing her a bit more than was healthy for either of them.

 

Sophie was there, however, to soothe hurt feelings and get the pair back on track.

 

“Come on,” she said, shunting them both towards the car.  “They should let us back in by now, and we probably shouldn’t leave Eliot alone very long.  Besides, I don’t know about you…” She smiled a secretive smile.  “…but I’m hungry enough to even eat hospital food.”

 

When Hardison slipped an arm around Parker’s shoulder, she did not pull away.  He heard her muttering periodically about mirrors and blood and fangs on the way to the hospital, and let her mutter.  Day like they’d had so far, he figured that Parker was honestly entitled to an extra allotment of crazy.

 

Even so, he couldn’t help but overhear the arguments she muttered to herself, interspersed with her grumbled defenses for her actions that she was determined to state under her breath, if not directly to the rest of the team.

 

That, above all else, worried him the most.

 

Because, as much as he hated to admit it – as much as the prospect shook even his geeky soul – they made sense.

 

He did not express these views to Sophie, or to Parker – although she usually trusted him to see her sense when the rest of the team wouldn’t, and he’d always tried to oblige.  Instead he silently resolved to himself to hit the laptop as soon as he was in a chair with a wi-fi for a little waiting room research.  It was clear that Parker had more to say on the subject of vampires and their new business partner, and he wanted to be open-minded and ready to pull a Van Helsing if she kept making sense.  It honestly paid to put faith in Parker when Parker asked for faith, and after the day they’d had so far Hardison decided that he was honestly ready to believe absolutely _anything_.

*****************************

“Sorry about Parker,” Nate said as he and Faith walked together towards the hotel parking lot.  “She has…issues.”

 

Faith stretched, swinging her arms as if to work some tension loose.  It was a clear, sunny day, and she appeared to be relishing the unexpected warmth.  “Issues I get, Padre – but if you have any pull at all with the girl, you need to keep her out of Angel’s stuff.”  There was a determined glint in her eyes that worried Nate.   He privately resolved to keep Parker and Faith as far away from each other as possible.

 

“So…you and Angel?” he asked finally, implication heavy in his voice.

 

Faith blinked, clearly startled by the question.  “Me and Angel?”  She laughed – full-throated and genuine.  “Oh, no.  No, no, no.  Nothing like that.”  She sobered somewhat, giving Nate a glimpse into what he suspected was a very interesting story.  “He’s a friend.  We’ve worked together before, and he’s seen me through some really bad stuff.”

 

“So you’re helping him out?”  They reached his car – Nate circled around towards the driver’s side, rummaging in his coat pocket for the keys.

 

Faith was distracted from answering when she realized what he was doing.  “This is yours?”  Off his nod, she grinned wildly.  “Sweet!  Insurance pays well, I guess.”

 

Nate chuckled, unlocking the doors.  “I’m not in insurance anymore, remember?  This is from the current job.”  He opened his door and dropped into the driver’s seat.  Faith joined him a moment later, eyes wide with appreciation as she ran her hands over the dashboard.

 

“The Robin Hood gig bought you this?”  She whistled.  “I am definitely doing something wrong.”

 

He waited until they were clear of the parking lot and heading for the warehouse district before picking up the thread of the conversation again.  “You into cars?”

 

“More of a bike girl myself,” she said, clearly warming to the subject.  “I’ve got a choice Ducati Streetfighter.”  She ran a hand across the dashboard again.  “This baby’s a beauty, though.  You’ve got taste, Padre.”

 

“Thanks,” Nate said.  Then, “Where are you living these days?  Still in Boston?”

 

She was quiet for a moment – _almost,_ Nate thought, _as if she was trying to decide how to answer._

 

“I’ve got an apartment in Cleveland,” she said.  “It’s mostly for sleeping though – work takes me on the road a lot.”

 

Nate tried to parse the subtext on that admission with what he’d seen of Faith so far, and failed to make any sense of it whatsoever.

**************************

 _This being evasive crap is for the birds,_ Faith thought as Father Nate’s Tesla sped them towards their destination.  She was way out of practice in dealing with normals when it came to the facts of her life and her “job”.  It didn’t help that Nate was just as easy to talk to as she’d always heard.

 

 _Probably should stop thinking about him as Father Nate too,_ she realized, casting the man she knew only as a priest-in-training another sidelong glance.  He hadn’t said anything, however, and it was difficult for her to think of him as anything else.

 

“Is it true you were in a gang?  When you were a kid?”  The question was hanging between them almost before Faith realized she’d asked it.  It had been one of the most hotly debated rumors on the floor back in her Belmont days, and she was amused to realize she could probably put the question to rest once and for all.

 

Nate glanced at her.  “Who told you that?”  There was a teasing edge to his voice, however, that invited her to pursue the topic.

 

“Your patients all said it was true.”  She shrugged.  “I always thought it was bullshit – stand up guy like you.”

 

He was silent for a moment, the ghost of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.  “It’s true,” he said finally.  “My dad was a numbers runner.  He wanted me to stay out of the life, but when I was a kid he never really did anything to keep me away from it, you know?”

 

She did.  Faith had heard the speech many times from her mother, growing up – about how she should stay in school and earn a better life for herself.  _Never occurred to her that being drunk when she lectured me might not get her the reaction she wanted._   “I get it,” she said.  “Big time.”  She spotted a familiar intersection and pointed.  “Turn right here.”

 

“Most of you did,” he said, once he’d made the turn.  “That’s why I never tried to keep it a secret.  Some of the other counselors thought I was glamorizing the life, but I figured you guys needed proof that it was possible to get out.”

 

Faith noticed the odd shift in his expression as he spoke, but was saved from pursuing it as the row of warehouses appeared on their right.  “Up there.”

*********************

Nate pulled the Tesla over to the curb, almost grateful for the distraction.  “You said they’d cleared out?”

 

“Total fire sale,” Faith said, “but there’s always a chance I missed something.”

 

She insisted on staying in front of him as they left the shelter of the car.  _Ellie’s confidence,_ Nate thought, watching how she carried herself – the way she scanned the area for signs of danger.  _She’s had training, though.  Combat training._   Now that he saw her in action, he could better believe that she’d been able to save Eliot from his attackers.

 

Nothing jumped out at them as they crossed the short distance to the warehouse.  Nate started forward to help Faith with the heavy doors, but she slid them aside without any visible effort at all.  Off his curious look, she shot him a wicked looking grin.  “I work out.”

 

“I can see that,” Nate said, as he followed her inside.

 

As promised, the dimly lit space was empty of boxes or equipment – anything he would have expected to be connected with the drug ring their clients had described.  Faith waited in the center of the room, while he paced the perimeter.  “You said this place was packed before?”

 

Faith nodded.  “To the proverbial walls, like I said.  Your boy walked in on a full-out manufacturing operation.  At least two dozen people going in and out – he’s lucky only some of them decided to jump him.”

 

A picture of Eliot in his hospital bed flashed into Nate’s mind, and he winced.  Remembering the bite marks, he started to ask Faith what they meant, since she would have seen part of the attack.  Parker’s crazy notion about Angel and Faith being vampires followed right on the heels of the thought however – snuffing out the question before it could leave his throat.

 

 _We’re gonna have to start over tracing those boys…_ Nate thought, dreading the look on the Thompson’s faces.  The warehouse had been their best lead.

 

A crash of wood and metal at the opposite end of the warehouse startled him out of his reverie.  He started towards the noise, even as Faith moved to intercept him.  “Hold on there, Padre.”

 

He ignored her – focused instead on the figure lurching towards them.  “Help…please…”  It was a young man – familiar looking – and obviously injured.

 

 _It can’t be,_ Nate thought, brushing Faith off and continuing towards the newcomer.  The closer he got, the more he was sure the man was Harry Thompson – the older of the two kids they were looking for.

 

“Nate!” Faith’s voice was sharp now, with a bite of command to it.  She grabbed his arm, dragging him around to face her.  “Seriously…hold on.”

 

Stunned, Nate moved to pull free of her grip.  “He’s one of the people we’ve been trying to find.  He’s hurt.”  _What’s wrong with her?_ he wondered, turning towards the stranger again.

 

It happened almost too fast for him to follow.  The pain and pleading seemed to melt away, as Harry Thompson’s face…changed.  Yellow eyes flashed at him under a forehead with too many ridges to be human.  A snarl showed teeth that were longer than they should have been, and filed to needle sharp points.

 

The thing he’d thought was Harry Thompson leapt at him.  Nate had a moment to register that he needed to move for his own continued health and well-being, and then Faith shoved him out of the way.

 

His first thought as he hit the concrete floor and rolled was that he needed to help Faith somehow.  _She can’t deal with that alone!_   He was halfway into a crouch, when he saw just how well his possible-daughter was dealing with the monster.

 

All on her own.

 

Nate watched, stunned, as Faith pummeled the creature – landing blow after blow on its head and body.  Only once did the monster managed to backhand her across the face.  Nate started to lurch forward, but held himself in check when Faith recovered and grinned at the thing.

 

“Shouldn’t have done that, Junior.”  And with that, she unleashed on the thing that Nate still half-believed had once been his client’s son.  He’d thought she’d had the upper hand before, but Faith had clearly been holding back.

 

Nate had no idea how long the fight lasted, but finally she pulled something out of the inner pocket of her jacket and made a stabbing motion at the creature’s chest.  It froze, mouth open in a scream of horror, before crumbling into a shower of dust.

 

Stunned, Nate fell back into a sitting position – trying to process the reality of what he’d just seen.

 

 _Parker was right about the vampires_ …

*********************

 _Gonna get my ass chewed for this,_ Faith thought, taking a moment to stow her stake and dust her hands against the rough fabric of her jeans.  Rule number one about slaying vampires – it was supposed to be a secret.

 

 _Funny how it never works out that way,_ she thought, turning finally to deal with the fallout.  Father Nate was sitting on the ground – his mouth predictably open as his brain searched for something reasonable to say.  _Too bad on that one, Padre,_ she thought.  Closing the distance between them in three strides, she extended a hand to help him up.  “You okay down there?”

 

It took him a moment to realize she was speaking.  Licking his lips nervously, he nodded and grabbed her hand.  With a small grunt of effort, Faith hauled him to his feet.  Crossing her arms over her chest, she waited patiently for the barrage of questions.

 

She didn’t have to wait long.  “That was a vampire?”

 

Faith nodded.

 

Nate turned away from her, looking at the pile of dust that had once been human.  “And you…staked him?”

 

 _Okay, more perceptive than I gave him credit for,_ Faith thought.  Sighing inwardly, she pulled her stake back out as Nate turned back to face her.  “It’s kind of a thing I do,” she said.  “Professionally.”

 

Chuckling ruefully, Nate shook his head.  “Work keeps you on the road a lot.  Of course it does.”  He paused for a moment, and some of the nervous energy appeared to leave him.  “Parker’s right, isn’t she?  About Angel being a vampire?”

 

 _Crap,_ Faith thought.  Seeing no way around it, she nodded.  “He’s different, though,” she hastened to add.  “He’s one of the good guys.”

 

She couldn’t read Nate’s expression as he digested the news.  “Look,” Faith said finally, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know – I promise.  I’ve got to check the area, though.  There might be more stragglers – it’s our best way to find out where they went with the drugs.”

 

Nate took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders.  “Okay then.  Where do we start?”

 

Faith smiled in spite of herself.  “You start by getting back to your car.  Call Angel – let him know what’s going down.”  She shook her head, sobering up immediately when he opened his mouth to protest.  “I’m serious, Padre.  I’ve got the skills to deal with this – you don’t.  You want to help me, get me backup that won’t get in my way.”

****************************

“I take back what I said about being willing to eat hospital food,” Sophie said, throwing her fork down in disgust.  “I think this came out of one of the labs somewhere.”

 

Hardison was still chewing his hamburger, but Sophie knew he wasn’t thrilled by the culinary experience.  Only Parker looked perfectly satisfied with her breakfast – Captain Crunch, an apple, and a chocolate frosted donut.  Sophie’s stomach did a slow, queasy roll just looking at it.

 

Nate’s voice over the com was a welcome distraction.  _“All right, gang.  Parker gets one free ‘I told you so’ on all of us about the vampires.”_

 

Sophie exchanged startled glances with her companions.  “Nate?  What did you say?”

 

_“You heard me.  Vampires are real.  I’ve just been attacked by one.”_

 

“Are you okay?” Hardison’s query was a second before Sophie could ask.

 

“Was I right about Faith and Mr. Angel?”  Parker’s expression was somewhere between fear and self-satisfaction.  _Must feel strange to be right about something so impossible,_ Sophie thought.

 

_“I’m fine.  Unfortunately our clients’ oldest son isn’t.”_

 

Sophie shook her head, trying to make sense of what Nate was saying.  “Vampires?  Nate, are you sure?”

 

 _“Believe me Sophie – I’m sure.  Faith and Angel are going to track the rest of them – apparently Faith hunts vampires professionally.”_   There was a moment of silence on the line.  Sophie could picture Nate’s expression, knowing that he was as stunned by this turn as the rest of them.

 

“But Mr. Angel’s a vampire,” Parker interjected.

 

_“Faith says he’s a good vampire.  Something about having a soul.”_

 

“What are we doing while this whole ‘vampire hunt’ is going down?” Hardison asked.  “You want us to head your way?”

 

 _“No!  We are way out of our depth on this one.  Eliot…”_   He paused again, and Sophie knew he was thinking of what vampires – apparently – had done to the team’s toughest member.

 

_“I saw Faith kill one of them.  She says that she does this professionally – I believe her.  We let them handle this part of it.  Parker, Hardison, I want you on guard duty.  I don’t want these things taking another shot at Eliot – even accidentally.”_

 

Parker and Hardison exchanged glances.  Sophie could tell that Hardison was torn between relief and disappointment.  _It has to be some kind of dream come true for him,_ she thought, barely suppressing a smile.

 

 _“Sophie – I need you with me.”_   Nate was speaking again.  _“Meet me at the coffee shop on Sixth as quick as you can.”_

 

Sophie blinked – surprised by the request.  “Of course.  I’m on my way.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two sides have agreed to work together, but it's hardly a marriage made in heaven.  Eliot's back in the game...sort of.  And Nate's past is threatening his ability to work the job.

It had been a near choice between the coffee shop and the bar across the street.Nate forced himself to take another sip of the strong, black coffee he’d asked for.

 

_ Vampires.My daughter kills vampires. _ It was bothering him more than he would ever dare admit that the vampire part of that idea had the most proof to back it up.

 

He still wasn’t completely sure of his decision to back off and let Angel and Faith run point on things.The Thompsons were their clients, and there was still a teenager out there unaccounted for.It went against the grain to hand things off at such a critical point, but without Eliot in the game Nate wasn’t sure what they could do.

 

And the longer he spent in Faith’s company, the harder it was becoming to keep his suspicions to himself.

 

“You don’t need me for a con, do you?”He hadn’t heard Sophie come into the shop, but there she was anyway – sliding into the seat across from him.“This is about Faith.”

 

He nodded, reaching across the table to take her hand.She squeezed it reassuringly.He dropped his gaze to his coffee cup – unable to look at her for long.He needed her support – needed her sympathy – but he wasn’t sure he deserved it. _You never asked._

 

After a long moment, he finally felt stable enough to speak.“I was fifteen when I met Faith’s mother,” he said, meeting her gaze as directly as he could manage.“The gang I belonged to, we…ah…ran protection for most of the stores in the neighborhood.”He could picture the moment as clearly as if it had just happened – the dark-haired, dark eyed girl facing down his gang’s enforcers without so much as a trace of fear.

 

“Ellen Maguire…Ellie.She was shoplifting from one of our customers.Gable and Georgie had her cornered out back when I showed up.”Gable had been his usual crude self, suggesting that Ellie pay off her debt to the gang in sexual favors.

 

She’d responded by kneeing him in the groin.

 

“You saved her,” Sophie said, bringing him back to the present.Nate smiled, shaking his head.Tears were pricking at the corners of his eyes as he called up the long-buried memories.

 

“She didn’t need me to save her.God, Sophie – she was amazing.So beautiful, and so tough.I’d never met anyone like her.”

 

Sophie nodded, squeezing his hand again.“You loved her?”

 

He nodded.“As much as anyone can be in love at fifteen.”They’d spent every free minute together – Nate couldn’t tally the number of times they’d cut school just to hang out and talk. _And other things._ It was all well and good to get sentimental about their relationship, but they were still teenagers largely ruled by their hormones.

 

“What happened?” Sophie asked.

 

Nate took another swig of his coffee, trying once more to pull himself together.“My father.He’d always planned on me going to college – getting out of the life.I think he knew I was running with a gang, but he figured once it was time for me to grow up and go to school, I’d walk away and never look back.”

 

The final fight they’d had on the subject had also been the last time Nate had ever defied Jimmy Ford on anything.He’d seen the back of his father’s hand more than a few times growing up, but this time Jimmy had used a closed fist to put him on the ground.“You are better than this, Nathan,” he’d said – looming over his son like an avenging god.“I will not let you waste your life on these streets!”

 

That had been in April of 1980.It would be six months before he saw Ellie again.“My father went to the gang himself to tell them I wasn’t coming back.I still don’t know what Ellie thought.”

 

“You didn’t try to contact her?”

 

The naivete of the question made him laugh.“You never met my father.”Sobering slightly, he continued, “I tried.Of course I tried.Everything I thought of, he’d…ah…thought of first.”That was the easiest way to explain the months of futile attempts to outwit his old man.

 

“Dad had me shipped off to boarding school within the month.It was six months before I finally saw her again,” he said – forcing himself to press on through the story.“She was still with the old crowd, and she’d taken up with George Lehane – one of our enforcers.”The first tears spilled free, remembering how changed Ellie had been – how she had screamed at him to leave her alone.“I could tell she was using drugs – Gable was always bragging that he’d get her hooked eventually and teach her a lesson.”He swiped angrily at his eyes.“She wouldn’t let me help her.”

 

He laughed bitterly, meeting Sophie’s gaze.“Do you have any idea how badly I need a drink right now?”

 

“What did you do next?” Sophie asked, wisely choosing to ignore the question.

 

He sighed.“Stayed in school and went to college, like my father planned.It wasn’t until years later – when I was in seminary – that I even realized she’d been pregnant that last time we saw each other.”

 

“That was when you met Faith?”

 

He nodded.“My counseling class involved us taking on patients at the Belmont Center – it’s a mental health facility for teenagers.”He remembered first seeing Faith in the day room, playing foosball with one of the other patients.The sight had stopped him cold in his tracks.“I recognized her immediately,” he said.“You wouldn’t believe how much she looks like her mother.Then when I found out she had Georgie’s last name…”His voice trailed off. _You never asked._

 

“You never suspected back then?” Sophie asked – her question echoing his own uncomfortable thoughts.

 

He sighed again.“I never let myself suspect.It wasn’t until I saw her birth date on Hardison’s readouts that I realized the math didn’t work.To be born full term in December, the latest Faith could have been conceived is the previous March.My father didn’t break us up until April.”

 

Sophie was quiet for a moment; Nate knew what she was going to say before she said it.“Nate – are you sure Ellie was faithful to you?”

 

_ That is the question, isn’t it? _ It was the only reason he hadn’t already spilled everything to Faith.“I’d like to say yes,” he admitted finally.“Sophie, I just don’t know.Gable and Georgie never stopped going after her.I didn’t realize how bad it was until I saw her that last time and realized how deep their hooks were in her.”

 

He drained his coffee cup, trying to ignore how badly he wanted it to be whiskey.“I can see why she would have hung paternity on Georgie in retrospect.It makes sense – Ellie was good at protecting herself, and Georgie could have given her that.Without a DNA test, I just don’t know if it had any basis in fact.”

***********************************************

Fortunately for Hardison, the private room had a wi-fi connection, allowing him to continue his research with rather more vigor than he would have been able to manage in the hospital waiting room.

 

Vampires were real. _Vampires_ were _real_. 

 

That was not okay. Hardison loved the fiction and fantasy as much as the next guy, but his beat was more along the lines of Cylons and TARDISes. If Cylons had been running this drug ring, Hardison would have already been on his way to hook up with Nate and Faith, familial awkwardness be damned.

 

But _vampires_? That was just…not okay.

 

Now that Parker had eaten breakfast and earned a free “I told you so” on every currently conscious member of the team, she was a great deal less fidgety.Somewhere between the cafeteria and Eliot’s room, she produced the wooden stake that Angel had apparently given her last night.As far as Hardison was concerned, the weapon was a testament to Angel’s “good guy” status, and a definite balm to the hacker’s jangled nerves. He and Parker weren’t completelydefenseless, at least.

 

“I told you so.” 

 

He looked up from his laptop screen, raising an eyebrow at Parker. The thief was grinning like she was a cat, and she’d just swallowed the biggest damn canary in the history of ever. 

 

“Hope you enjoyed that,” he said finally, returning his attention to the laptop screen after his attempt to mimic Nate’s “stern” look failed to make her stop grinning. “’Cause Nate only gave you one, and woman, that was _one_.”

 

He heard Parker shift to a more comfortable position in her chair, uncurling herself just a little and sitting more like a regular human being. Then: 

 

“I told you so.”

 

Hardison tried to glower at her, to no avail as Parker’s grin only widened. “You…”

 

“I did,” she countered.“I investigated and I thought it out and I was right.” Her voice became suddenly reproachful, and her grin faded into a pout. “And I _tried_ to tell you.” 

 

Hardison softened. She had. She really had. Now that he mentally reviewed her behavior in the apartment, it all made sense. _The curtains. Faith._ The repeated jabbing of two fingers into the side of her neck.

 

“You were makin’ sense,” he tried to reassure her. “It’s just…some things, it takes a while to process. Even for people like us.”

 

Parker tilted her head to one side, regarding him strangely in the familiar way that told Hardison she was building up to something real.“I thought you’d be the first to believe me.”

 

He blinked.“Really?”

 

“Yeah. You’re always talking about stuff like that. Phone boxes that are actually time machines. Worlds where the monsters always come back after you kill them. Spaceships and aliens with pointy ears. Stuff like that. All the time. Why were vampires so hard for you if you believe in all of that?”

 

Hardison almost laughed, then sobered – remembering this was Parkerhe was talking to. _What the hell – got nothing more important to do than babysit Eliot._ Maybe it was time for a little “come to Jesus” for the both of them. 

 

“Parker, I…I likewatching stuff like that, sure. I mean, it’s…it’s fun, it’s awesome. I have seen every single episode of the news series of Doctor Who, and I still…I get chills, man, chills, during every opening scene.”He winced, remembering one of their previous cases.“And, c’mon, you know I would have never missed that one briefing if an expansion… _the_ expansion…wasn’t involved. I love stuff like that. Outside of doin’ what I do for you guys, it’s what I do for…for me.”He sighed.“But I don’t believe in any of it, Parker. I mean…certain things just don’t make sense.”He paused, smiling slightly.“Unless you’re the one talkin’ about it, of course.”

 

To his surprise, this statement prompted an answering smile from Parker. “You think I make sense?”

 

Hardison’s grin widened – sensing the serious part of their conversation was over.“You told me so, didn’t you?”

 

Parker nodded cheerfully. “Yep. Um…” She bit her lip. “I still get to tell Nate and Sophie that, right?”

 

“I’ll even let you have another freebie on me,” he said, returning his attention to the laptop screen. “Just toss me that, would ya?”

 

He indicated the stake. Parker tossed it to him, and Hardison went to work trying to identify the grain of the wood on a database he’d found. There were databases for everything these days, and right now he was exceedingly grateful for that fact. _Thank you, Wikipedia_. Maybe it didn’t matter what type of wood you made the stake out of. _And maybe it does._ Some extra research made a whole lot of sense right about now.

 

He saw Parker out of the corner of his eye turn her attention back to watching Eliot.A heartbeat later, she gasped and practically levitated out of her seat.“Hardison!”

 

“What? What?!” Hardison yelped, half-convinced they were being attacked, and tried to simultaneously protect his laptop and raise the stake Parker had given him to ward off their legion of undead attackers. “Lemme tell you, you overgrown bats, I had garlic pizza for dinner last night, and… _Eliot!_ ” 

 

He was so stunned by the unexpected sight of movement in the bed that he barely managed to fumble the laptop onto a nearby table before leaping after Parker and hurrying to Eliot’s side.

 

It was true.For the first time in well over twenty-four hours at this point, Eliot Spencer was conscious. 

 

He wasn’t fully conscious – that much was clear to Hardison, at least, as they reached his side. The drugs, combined with his extensive injuries, were definitely doing a number on him, but his eyes were open, and he was looking at them. 

 

“Guys…” he slurred. “What…where am…”

 

“Hospital, man,” said Hardison immediately, saving Eliot the effort of finishing. He reached over and tapped the latest empty blood bag. “Meet your new best friend.” 

 

Eliot had to swallow before trying to form words again. “Did you..?”

 

Parker actually laughed. Hardison shook his head. “Naw, man. No. _Hell_ , no. Not us. Out-of-towners.”

 

“Vampire out-of-towners,” added Parker helpfully. Then, “From Wolfram and Hart.”

 

Hardison whipped round to stare at her. “Um, Parker? Let’s not stress out the man hooked up to the tubes, okay?”

 

Parker shrugged. “Faith’s supposed to handle things. It’s not our deal right now.” 

 

Hardison had to admit that she did have a point. _Not as if Eliot’s going out for revenge any time soon, either,_ he thought.However, when he turned his attention back to the hitter, Eliot didn’t look surprised or confused at the news of Wolfram and Hart’s involvement.In fact, he had visibly _relaxed._ Hardison didn’t like the idea of anyone he knew relaxing when the infamous law firm’s name was mentioned.

 

“They’re vampires,” repeated Parker.

 

Eliot smiled weakly.“Kinda…kinda knew about the vampires, darlin’.” He managed to raise a hand and wave distractedly at the bandages on his neck. “Kinda…hard to miss.” 

 

“And good ol’ W and H hasn’t gone after anybody with the ban hammer, so all’s quiet on that front for now,” added Hardison, deciding that there was no need to add his own worries about the law firm’s involvement into the mix. 

 

Eliot’s brow furrowed slightly.“Anyone ask about me?”

 

Hardison nodded.“Yeah, actually. Mr. Angel – he’s apparently their latest ‘leader of the pack’.Also the one who checked you in here after his partner saved your ass.He asked a whole lot o’ questions. Freaked us all the hell out.”

 

“Nate doesn’t like him,” Parker added helpfully.

 

“Not…my name, though,” Eliot said.“Didn’t use…my name.”

 

“Nope,” Hardison said.“He thought you were this guy ‘Lindsey McDonald.’”

 

Eliot actually laughed. 

*************************************************

It was a weak, breathy, sick sound, but it was a laugh.That was both comforting and deeply worrying. Parker stared fixedly at Eliot’s morphine levels, but they were quite low. _In fact,_ she decided, _he’s probably ready for another dose._ Eliot’s increased coherency would normally have been a good thing, but Parker did not want her teammate to be in pain just for the sake of conversation. She reached out to jab the button.

 

“Leave it,” ordered Eliot softly. “I’ll be okay.”

 

Parker left it, although she wasn’t happy about it. “Isn’t ‘Lindsey’ a girl’s name?” she asked.

 

Eliot laughed, but apparently two laughs in less than a minute were more than he could handle in his weakened state. The laugh twisted into a wince of pain, and before he could protest any further Parker jabbed the button on the morphine drip. 

 

She exchanged an anxious glance with Hardison, and they waited until the drugs had time to take effect. The fact that Eliot had not protested out loud when Parker upped his dose was an effective testament to just how truly broken their teammate was. Parker knew Hardison was just as glad as she was that Nate had sent them back here. 

 

It was several moments before Eliot’s breathing evened out, and he relaxed against the pillows.Parker immediately picked up the threads of the dropped conversation.“Isn’t it?” she asked.“A girl’s name?” 

 

“Never tell him that,” said Eliot. 

*************************************

Eliot’s speech, which had been stronger and more normal sounding a few minutes earlier, was heavy and slurred once more. With a sudden flash of insight, Hardison understood at least one of the reasons Eliot always refused drugs under normal circumstances. Looking at him now, this did not seem like the man who had once run ten blocks with a concussion and broken ribs, and had _still_ been able to deal out plenty of pain and destruction when he reached the top floor of their office. 

 

This man just looked… _human_. 

 

“This a usual name for you?” Hardison asked, leaning forward a little. “Did I do all that work makin’ up those fake IDs for you, when you had one just lyin’ around?” 

 

“You might say that.” 

 

Hardison scowled.“Man, before that cast comes off your hand, you and I are gonna have _words_.” 

 

He had to attribute Eliot’s complete lack of objection to the morphine. _Or hell_ , he thought, _maybe he’s just that glad to be alive_. 

 

It had been touch and go for too long for anybody’s peace of mind.

 

Hardison’s brooding was interrupted by the sound of the door being opened. He, Parker, and Eliot looked towards the sound to see a nervous looking nurse.

 

“I’m…looking for Mr. McDonald,” she said, easing into the room. “Or anyone responsible for him, really.”

 

Eliot started struggling to sit up. Parker placed a hand on his chest and kept him down, nodding once at Hardison. Hardison nodded back, then walked towards the nurse.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “That’d be me. My man just came back to us, y’know, and he’s still a bit…y’know.” He spun his index finger round his temple a few times, casting significant glances back towards the bed. “Loves his morphine, oh yes he does. Anyway, so, why don’t you an’ I just step out here an’ we’ll discuss any questions you have…”

 

Talking too persistently to give the nurse any time to protest, he shunted her out into the hallway. As he closed the door behind them, however, Parker and Eliot saw him tap his ear. 

 

Eliot’s hand instinctively went to his ear, and Parker saw the mild panic on his face when he couldn’t find the com. Without saying a word, she produced the ear piece from her pocket and handed it to him. He accepted it with a short, grateful nod, and fitted it back in place just in time for Hardison to start talking.

 

_ “Now, what seems to be the problem?” _

__

_ “I’m afraid we’ve uncovered a problem with Mr. McDonald’s identification.” _

__

_ “Oh, yeah? Well, this ain’t exactly the first time we’ve been in an’ out of white rooms.These little mess ups happen all the time…” _

__

Hardison suddenly stopped talking. Parker thought she heard a faint rustle of paper in the ensuing silence, which went on for several uncomfortable seconds. She saw that Eliot was preparing to pull out his IV…and she was prepared to let him…before their teammate started talking again. They recognized his “com voice”, and instantly froze in place, the better to hear.

 

_ “Well, well, now look at this. Do my eyes deceive me, or is this a  _ coroner’s report _for a man by the name of_ Lindsey McDonald _?”_

__

Parker had never seen anything approaching the expression of shock that flashed across Eliot’s face as Hardison spoke. It was there and gone in less than a second, but it had been real, and she’d seen it – even though Eliot definitely hadn’t meant for her to.

 

She wasn’t about to bring it up, however, because they suddenly had bigger problems.Hardison was still talking, resorting to every single trick in his limited repertoire, in order to try and keep the nurse in the hallway as long as possible. Eliot had gone back to work pulling the IVs out of his body. Parker bit her lip, not liking how much it was obviously hurting him. 

 

Luckily, she had a part to play as well.She toed the nearest chair into place below a seemingly random ceiling tile.Stepping up on the vinyl covered seat, she shifted the square out of the way and reached up into the space to retrieve what she’d left there hours earlier. 

 

By the time she tossed Eliot his change of clothes, he’d freed himself of the network of needles and monitors.There was no time for modesty, and Parker had never seen the point anyway. Eliot focused on getting changed, and Parker went to work rigging up the harness she’d dragged down with the clothes. 

 

Getting him into the harness was more difficult than it should have been, because of the broken ribs. This time the morphine in Eliot’s system was definitely working in their favor. Parker managed to rig him up without causing him too much pain, and then he clambered out the window and waited for her to lower him into the alley below. 

 

She was in the process of doing just that when Hardison hurried back into the room, slamming the door behind him and locking it for good measure.

 

“Did what I could, but she was lookin’ awful shifty when she left.I figure we’ve got about five minutes before some nice young men in clean white coats come to talk to us next. How’s it goin’?”

 

Parker watched as Eliot’s feet touched down on the ground. He went to work struggling out of the harness. She winched it up once he had, and motioned for Hardison. He gulped, looking deeply nervous, but allowed her to strap him in and lower him down after Eliot. 

 

It took half the time for Parker to lower herself down than it had to lower Hardison and Eliot. _Boys_ , she thought grumpily, touching down neatly and pulling the harness after her once she had. She kept her thoughts to herself, however; Eliot in particular was in no shape to hear her complain. 

 

_ “Parker, what the hell are you doing?” _

__

As one, they winced. Parker was privately amazed that it had taken Nate this long to comment, but he’d probably been afraid of distracting Hardison from distracting the nurse. She had to commend Hardison once again, though, for his technical genius. She’d thought that their escape had been quiet – it had never occurred to her that the coms could even pick up the _zip_ of her harness line. 

 

“Escaping,” she replied, knowing that Nate was still waiting for an answer. 

 

_ “Yes, I gathered that. Hardison – what’s this about a ‘coroner’s report’?” _

__

“Your guess is as good as ours,” said Hardison with a shrug. “We ain’t the ones who signed Eliot in using a dead man’s name, after all. Talk to Mr. Black-on-Black if you wanna know the details.” 

 

They heard Nate sigh. _“I intend to. This job has gotten way out of hand. Is Eliot there?”_

__

“Here, boss,” said Eliot.

 

_ “How are you?” _

__

“Upright. I’d call that progress.”

 

_ “So would I. Get back to the loft. We’ll rest up and regroup there, then see what has to be done.” _

__

“Right,” agreed the three. 

*****************************************

Eliot continued to stay upright, but the morphine meant that his maneuverability was impaired beyond anything that could be blamed on the concussion and the broken ribs. The doctors had managed to pump a few extra pints of blood into him, but he’d still lost a lot of to begin with. 

 

Hardison and Parker let him support himself, knowing he would never agree to their help. They did flank him on the rush home, however, keeping him on course and subtly nudging him upright when he stumbled.

 

After a while, Eliot kept himself distracted by asking about everything that had taken place while he’d been unconscious. He asked pointed, careful questions about Angel once he learned about the man’s connections with Wolfram and Hart. 

 

He also didn’t seem the least bit upset to find that his saviors had been a vampire and a murderess, a fact which perturbed Hardison to no end. 

 

“Man, are you tryin’ to tell me that it does not bother you in the _slightest_ that you got put in the hospital by things which should not _actually_ exist?”

 

Eliot shook his head, trying to ignore the protests from his bruised skull.“Nope. From what’s been said, seems like these things are pretty standard.” He grinned wolfishly. “Put a stake in my hand next time and see how it goes.” 

 

Hardison sighed heavily. “Whatever you say, Anita.”

 

Parker amazed herself by managing to keep Eliot from taking a proper swipe at Hardison.The hitter stopped mid-swing, not bothering to shake her off as he processed what Hardison had actually said.“You read _vampire porn?_ ”

 

“What?” Hardison sputtered.“Vampire?Naw…hell no.”Then he stopped as something seemed to occur to him.“How in the hell do you know it’s vampire porn?”

 

Eliot pulled free of Parker’s grip then, but Hardison sidestepped his next attempt at retaliation more easily than he should have been able to.“Okay, then, what about Wolfram and Hart?” Hardison demanded, obviously trying hard to change the subject. “I background checked you, man, and I _know_ that you have got outstanding warrants within the borders of our fair nation. You cannot tell me that the thought of lawyers that powerful sniffin’ around you doesn’t make you sweat.”

 

“Yeah, actually, I can,” Eliot said.“‘Cause it doesn’t.” 

 

Off Hardison and Parker’s looks of disbelief, Eliot shrugged – managing not to wince this time. “They took the time to bring me in and get me patched up. ‘Sides, Wolfram and Hart’s never been any trouble for me. They’ve even helped me out of a few messes in the past that I couldn’t fight my way out of.” 

 

Parker cast him a suspicious sidelong glance. “Wolfram and Hart _helps_ you?”

 

“It’s what they do. Helpin’ the bad guys is kinda their specialty.”

 

“But you’re not a bad guy…right?”

 

Eliot hesitated the barest fraction of a second before he replied, his voice carefully casual. “Once upon a time. Weren’t we all?” 

 

Hardison shrugged. “By the conventional standards of an uncaring world, yeah.”

 

“But now we’re the good guys,” Parker insisted. “Right?”Eliot sensed that confirmation of that belief was important to her.

 

“Right,” agreed Hardison.

 

“Right,” Eliot said. 

 

He asked questions about what Nate had been doing – and was very surprised to hear about the possibility that his savior might be Nate’s previously unknown daughter. 

***************************

“How’s he handling it?” Eliot asked.

 

Parker was saved from answering by Hardison.“Holding it together, far as we know.Sophie’s with him.”

 

“I don’t like her,” Parker said, feeling the need to get her feelings on the table – so to speak.“She’s not nice enough to be Nate’s daughter.”

 

Neither Eliot nor Hardison had anything to say to that, but Parker could feel the hiccup in the conversation.

 

No matter how many questions Eliot asked, Parker kept coming back to the feeling that he was most concerned about the coroner’s report the hospital had dug up. _If there’s a coroner’s report on Lindsey McDonald,_ she thought, _that means that Lindsey McDonald was a real person._

 

Real enough for Eliot to panic upon learning the man was dead.

 

Parker knew Eliot wouldn’t keep any secrets that might endanger the team, but of all of them she suspected he had the most to hide.That was part of why he stuck around – they lethim keep his secrets.Now was definitely not the time to change that unspoken rule and start pressing him for sensitive information. 

 

Eliot was panting for breath by the time they reached the pub. The morphine had clearly worn off. He tried to hide how much pain he was in, but Hardison and Parker knew him better than he probably thought they did. When he had to lean against the wall, the two of them exchanged a worried look.Hardison went immediately to unlock the back door for them – no way were they getting Eliot through the crowded bar, even if Hardison did own the building. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confrontations aplenty leave the Leverage team fighting the past on two fronts.

In the end he was so weak it took both Parker and Hardison to settle Eliot in Nate’s bed.  They didn’t bother offering him any aspirin, which saved him the trouble of refusing it.  The two of them then hovered awkwardly for a few minutes, before he finally sent them downstairs to wait for Nate and Sophie so he could sleep.  

Sleep didn’t come.  Eliot was reasonably sure that his concussion was no longer life threatening, but he hurt too much and he’d slept enough under the influence of the morphine.  He finally satisfied himself by simply trying to get comfortable, and listening in on Hardison and Parker’s anxious chatter over the coms.  Nate and Sophie would be home soon, and…and…

_...and then what?_

They couldn’t handle _vampires_.  Eliot had actually known that vampires existed before the job even started, and he’d still nearly gotten himself killed.  For all their weaknesses, vampires were fast and strong and if they managed to hold you in place for more than a minute you were dead – thirty seconds, if more than one decided to take a bite out of you.

If it hadn’t been for Faith, he would have died in that warehouse – or worse.  He hadn’t stood a chance, and so his team wouldn’t either.  That was just a fact they’d all have to accept.  He wasn’t sure what Faith and this Angel character could do that they couldn’t, but Angel wasa vampire, and Faith had lived long enough to get him out of the building.  Those were two big pluses which already meant that they had a better chance than the rest of his team combined.

The smart thing to do, now that he was somewhere safe, was to rest up and try to will his body into healing faster.  The best thing to do was let Faith and Angel do their thing.  Nate and Sophie would be back soon, and they could…just… _wait_.

The thought of just lyinghere and letting someone else do hisjob made the bile rise in Eliot’s throat.  Never mind the idea of letting Angel just waltz away when the bastard had to know what had happened to Lindsey.

 _Cool off_ , he told himself.  Now was _not_ the time to run off and do something stupid, especially when the team was on high alert for his sake.  Lindsey was _dead_ – it didn’t matter how, it didn’t matter why.  Knowing what had happened wouldn’t change anything.  Rushing off half-cocked and injured just for answers wouldn’t do him or the team any good, especially not if there were vampires in the area and Wolfram and Hart was around.  

 _Lindsey was the only reason you worked with those guys in the first place._   Lindsey had been the only one willing to bail him out of trouble when he couldn’t simply punch and kick his way out.

Eliot closed his eyes, trying to get his breathing under control.  No matter how much he reminded himself that dead was dead, and he couldn’t change whatever had happened, thinking of Lindsey made his chest clench and his hands shake.

 _Some ties you just can’t cut,_ a deep, dark part of him whispered, _no matter how far you go._

**************************

Sophie lay a hand on Nate’s shoulder as they approached the apartment door.  “Are you going to be okay?”

Nate smiled at her.  It was a loaded question, but at least now that she had the full story Sophie wasn’t pushing him to do something right this second about his problem.  “Probably not,” he admitted, “but I promise I’ll make it through the next few hours.”

The scene that met them when Nate opened the door was comfortingly familiar.  Hardison was in his chair, hunched over his laptop.  A dizzying stream of data flashed across the bank of wall monitors.  Parker was leaning against the kitchen counter, plowing through a bowl of her favorite cereal.

“How’s Eliot?” Nate asked, heading immediately in Hardison’s direction.  If there was anything new he needed to know, Hardison was the one who would tell him.

The hacker glanced up at him.  “Not good, man.  We got him out of the hospital, but it was a near thing.”

Nate glanced over at Parker.  “And why did we get him out of the hospital?”  He still wanted to know why they had felt the need to harness Eliot out of a window and into a four floor drop, but he wasn’t sure he trusted Parker to tell him.

“Somebody turned up a coroner’s report on the mysterious Lindsey McDonald,” Hardison said.  “Didn’t think it was prudent to stick around and try to explain that.”

“Eliot didn’t want to stay,” Parker added.  “He got real upset when he heard Lindsey was dead, and he started pulling out his tubes and everything.”

Sophie winced.  “Well,” she said, trying to recover somewhat, “I guess that proves what Mr. Angel was telling us about his being presumed dead.”

With a sudden flash of insight, Nate turned back to his hacker.  “What do we know about Lindsey McDonald?” he asked, giving Hardison the opening he hoped the man was looking for.

Hardison pressed a button on his laptop, and the screens in front of them resolved into pictures and facts on one “Lindsey McDonald, Attorney at Law”.  “Meet Lindsey McDonald – once upon a time, Wolfram and Hart’s best and brightest.  Handled all of their top cases, was co-VP of ‘special projects’ for a while.”

Nate moved closer to the monitors, studying the largest picture of a man who, minus the shorter hair, was the perfect image of Eliot Spencer.

“Is it Eliot?” Sophie asked.  “One of his aliases?”

“Lindsey’s a real person,” Parker said.  “Eliot said so.”

“His twin brother,” Nate said – making the intuitive leap.  “Lindsey was Eliot’s failsafe – bailed him out of trouble he couldn’t punch or kick his way out of, right?”

A clatter of laptop keys was his initial response.  After a moment, Hardison said, “Looks like.  McDonald had three siblings that survived to adulthood.  One of them could’ve been our boy.”

Nate puzzled the situation over another moment.  “When did McDonald die?”

“According to the coroner’s report Spring of 2004.  Dude was found shot in a one room apartment in a really bad section of South Central LA.”

“And Eliot never knew…”

*************************************

Getting out of the apartment had been less difficult for Eliot than anyone would have been comfortable admitting.  And taxi drivers were the same everywhere – all willing to shut up and drive absolutely anyone anywhere for enough money.

Eliot knew his teammates were going to have a fit about him leaving, but he’d lain in bed arguing with himself for a good half hour, and finally he just hadn’t been able to stand it.

He’d known that Nate kept ‘mad money’ under the mattress, and had silently promised to pay his boss back.  Parker had mentioned that Faith and Angel were staying at the Seaport Hotel, so he’d decided to start there, pausing just long enough to take out his earpiece and leave it on the bedside table.

The fact that he didn’t know the room number, and couldn’t ask at the desk without attracting unnecessary attention didn’t even slow him down.

As he stepped out of the cab, however, luck was on his side for the first time in days.

“Hey!  Eliot!”

He flinched when the unfamiliar voice called his name, and looked round to see who had recognized him.

He’d never been introduced to the dark-haired woman striding towards him, but he would never forget her face.  They’d spent a grand total of thirty seconds in each other’s company, and he’d barely been conscious enough to get a good look at her face as she pulled the vampire away from his neck.

“Man,” she said, coming to a stop beside him as the taxi drove away. “Either you’re not entirely human yourself, or you’re just _nuts_. Docs let you out looking like that?”

“Not quite.”

Faith quirked a smile at him.  “Believe me, I know how that goes.”  Then, taking a closer look at him, she took him by the arm and went to work steering him towards the nearest bench.  “C’mon. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

“Angel.”

“What about him?”

“Need to talk to him.”

Faith seemed to recognize something in his eyes.  She sighed and shook her head.  “Look, let me give you some friendly advice, okay?  One reformed psycho to another.  Whatever he did to you once upon a time, you’re not in any shape for payback right now.  You know what he is, don’t you?”

Eliot nodded.  “Yep.  Don’t care.  I’m not lookin’ for payback.  I just need to talk.  I just want answers.”

The repetition seemed to help steady him.  Faith, at least, seemed to believe he was sincere.  Eliot saw her relax very slightly.  “Hey, boss man knows things.  Probably got your answers.”  She paused a moment, checking him out more completely.  “Need help up?” she asked finally.  “No offense, but…the lobby’s kind of not an option for you right now.  We’d like to keep under the radar ourselves.”

 _You’ve come this far._   If Faith could get him to Angel, he’d follow her lead.  “That’s fine.”

Although he’d never admit it to anyone, Eliot let her help him to his feet because his chest hurt, and he was still short a pint or two of blood and she’d already saved his life once.  He allowed her to guide him to the alley behind the hotel and help him up the fire escape leading up five floors.

When they stopped, Faith rapped on a seemingly random window covered by heavy curtains. A moment later, the catch was loosed from the inside.  Faith waited for a ten-count, then lifted the window, moved the curtains aside, and swung herself over the sill and into the room.  Eliot followed.

 _There he is._  Angel had ducked into the kitchen to avoid the beam of dying sunlight let in by the opening of the curtains.  He nodded as Faith entered, and his eyebrows raised very slightly when Eliot appeared behind her.

“Relax, boss,” said Faith, jerking her head at their visitor.  “His good hand’s in a cast and he needed me to help him up here.  Just wants to talk.”

“Do you?” asked Angel, transferring his gaze to Eliot.

Eliot nodded.  “Uh-huh.”

Angel nodded.  “All right.” He paused. “Your friends don’t know you’re here, do they?”

“They’ll guess.”

“You should probably get this confab started then,” interjected Faith, jerking a thumb at the nearest chair.  “Sit down.”

Eliot sat.  Angel took a chair across from him.  Faith leaned against the kitchen counter, the better to keep both men in sight.

******************************

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked, leaning forward.  This man – Eliot, he reminded himself – was anxious, with an undertone of genuine fear.  _He’s not afraid of me or Faith, though,_ Angel thought.  _Or even the fact that he nearly died back in that warehouse._  He knew now that the man sitting across from him was not Lindsey McDonald, but…

“Hardison mentioned that you’re with Wolfram and Hart, right?” Eliot said, interrupting Angel’s musings.  “Top guy on the totem pole?”

Angel nodded once.  “At the moment.”

“And you’re the ones who signed me in under Lindsey’s name?”

“Case of mistaken identity,” Angel said.  “Sorry about that.  I got the call about the mix-up.”

Eliot studied him for a second, digesting what he’d said.  “You thought I _was_ Lindsey?”

Angel shrugged.  “Well, there _is_ a resemblance.”

There was another long pause.  This time Angel could almost hear the wheels turning in Eliot’s brain.  Finally he said, “He’s my brother. My twin.”  Another pause.  “ _Was_ my brother.”

Angel’s mind was suddenly in overdrive.  It was obvious, of course.  It was the obvious, simple answer, which was probably why he’d neverconsidered it.  Lindsey had had three siblings who could have lived to adulthood.   _Who’s to say that one of them couldn’t have been his twin brother?_

Lindsey hadn’t somehow mysteriously survived Angel’s betrayal.  No, what they’d stumbled across here was nothing more than a case of mistaken identity when Angel at least hadn’t even known that there wasanother identity to mistake in the first place.

 “You didn’t know he was dead,” Angel said softly, as realization struck him.

Eliot shrugged.  “We weren’t close.”  Nothing else – no indication that the news had affected him in any way.

“But you came to me anyway?”

Eliot grinned wolfishly.  “I’m the one who made a living busting heads, but Lindsey wasn’t a pushover.  ‘Sides, you must’ve known he had a lot of enemies.  I just wanna know which one got lucky.”

 _This won’t end well,_ Angel thought.  “Why?” he asked finally.  “For revenge?   I thought you said you weren’t close.”  

“We weren’t.”  Eliot’s jaw tightened.  “He was my brother.  I don’t need revenge.  That won’t solve anything, it won’t fix anything.  I just need to know.”  He paused.  “Person who killed him might come after me next, after all.  C’mon. You’re runnin’ the show, least for now.  You must know something about what happened.”

 _Well, what the hell?_  The man had come here for answers, and Angel could at least give him that.  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.  I know the one who did it…and I’m the one who gave the order.”

*******************************

The only sound in the apartment was Faith letting out her breath in a long, low whistle.  The Slayer tensed, waiting for Eliot to make a lunge for Angel.   _Any second now…_ and yes, she saw his muscles briefly tighten – but for fight or flight she couldn’t tell.

The moment passed.  Eliot Spencer remained sitting, showing no real inclination to get up.  He took only a few seconds to digest Angel’s revelation, and then he nodded. ”All right.”

This was such a fundamentally _wrong_ reaction that Faith felt moved to comment. “Did you _hear_ him?”

“Yeah,” said Eliot.  He was still staring intently at Angel – too intently for Faith’s comfort level.  “I said I wasn’t after revenge.  And I’m not.  I just wanted to know.  Now I do.”

 _This isn’t over,_ Faith realized.  _He just hasn’t decided what he wants to do._   She didn’t know how she knew what was in Eliot’s heart when he probably didn’t even realize it yet himself, but she was as sure of it as she’d ever been of anything.

Angel tilted his head curiously.  “You really weren’t close, were you?”

“From all I’ve heard, you’re both decent people,” Eliot said.  Which, Faith noted, was not exactlyan answer to Angel’s question.  “Fact is, I would have died if you hadn’t gotten me to the hospital.  You saved my life, even if you thought I was him at the time.  Nate seems to think you’re even worth trusting the rest of our job to.  Knowing that, and knowing what I do about some of the things Lindsey got up to working for you guys…no. I don’t need any payback. Not…for him.”

Angel nodded.  “Glad to hear it. I really don’t have time for a grudge match, not with everything else we’ve got on our plates.”

“You hear anything about the rest of that drug ring?”

Faith visibly perked up at the question, and Angel nodded.  “I’ve got it narrowed down,” he said. “I figure one last sweep should give us their new location.”

“Awesome,” Faith said, getting to her feet and stretching.  “Point me in the right direction and pull the trigger, boss.”

Angel held up a hand, shaking his head.  “No. The sun will be setting soon. I’ll go.”  When he saw Faith’s obvious reluctance to agree, he smiled.  “Give me a break, Faith. I’ve been trapped up here all day.  I need some action.”

“Fine.”  She sighed.  “Guess you’re right.” She forced herself to return his smile.  “Partners take turns, right?”

“Right.”  Angel glanced at Eliot.  “You coming?”

He nodded.  “Yep.”

“What?” Faith yelped, looking back and forth from Angel to Eliot.  “You’re taking the guy with the broken hand instead of me?  Boss, I’m insulted.”

“It’s just recon, Faith,” Angel said simply.

“It’s never ‘just recon.’”

“I’ll be fine.”

“And what about him?”  Faith pointed at Eliot, and glowered threateningly at him for good measure.  “No offense, but you look like you’re about to drop, and I don’t want to be the one explaining to the padre why I let you go off and get yourself bitten all over again!”  

Eliot blinked, momentarily confused by her reference to Nate.  He recovered quickly.  “Since when did it become your job to ‘let’ me do anything?” he snapped.

Faith snorted.  “Saving your sorry ass ring any bells?”

Now Eliot looked like he was willing to take a swing – at her.  “I know what I’m facing, now,” he said.  “I can handle myself.”

“Like hell!”  Faith’s hands clenched into fists.  “If I have to tie you to that chair you’re sitting in…”

Eliot grinned at her.  “Sounds promising.  I’ll take a rain check.”

“Faith,” said Angel – putting himself physically in her path.  His voice did not rise, but his tone brooked no further argument.  “I’ll take care of him – I promise.”  He glanced over his shoulder at Eliot.  “Maybe he can work off some of that excess aggression.”

“I don’t have ‘excess aggression’,” growled Eliot.  “I just…”  He grimaced. “Look, I used to be claustrophobic, when I was younger.  Then I locked myself in a wood shed for a few days.  Hasn’t bothered me since.”

“So to cure your fear of vampires, you’re going to take on a nest?”  Faith laughed derisively. “God, that is so macho.”

“Nobody’s taking on a nest,” said Angel firmly.  “Not yet, anyway. This is just recon, Faith.  I promise.”

She threw up her hands.  “Fine.  Your funeral.”  Turning on her heel, she stalked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda from the refrigerator.  When she slammed the door shut – a little harder than she’d intended, she saw that Eliot had followed her.  “What?”

He was quiet for a moment, just looking at her.  When he spoke, his voice was low and serious.  “I have to do this.  You get that, don’t you?”

She did – that was the frustrating part.  “Thing is – that guy in there?” she said, gesturing in Angel’s direction.  “He’s real important to me.  Important enough that I don’t like trusting his back to someone in your condition.”

Eliot nodded.  “I get that.  If you’re out of it though – I’d like to ask a favor if I could?”

Faith was quiet for a second.  It paid to consider all the angles when agreeing to do favors for strangers.  “Shoot,” she said finally.  There was a life between them already – and just because he asked didn’t mean she had to say yes.

“My team – they’re probably already on their way here looking for me.  They’re real important to me too.”  He paused, struggling with more emotions than Faith suspected he was truly comfortable with.  “Look after them?  Keep them out of the fight if you can?”

 _I can do that._   Faith liked what she’d seen of the group so far.  The blonde still creeped her out, but the rest of them seemed like good people.  “Five by five,” she said, nodding.  It wasn’t likely to be the level of action she was used to, but it was probably good for working off some of her karma.

Eliot looked visibly relaxed.  “Thanks,” he said.  There was a moment of silence, then he laughed softly, shaking his head.

“What?” Faith asked, confused.

Eliot shook his head again – still smiling.  “Sorry.  Just imagining how hard Nate would try and kick my ass if he knew I was putting the moves on his kid.”

*****************************

Angel heard the can of soda hit the tile floor.  “Faith?”

He and Eliot collided at the door to the kitchen.  One quick look was all it took for Angel to realize that while the other man might have been the cause of what was happening across the room from them – he had no idea what he had done.  _Not really._

Faith was backed up against the far wall – hands shaking, dark eyes wide and filled with more emotions than he could parse.  “What happened?” he growled over his shoulder at Eliot.

“I thought she knew,” Eliot said, his voice low and urgent.  “They talked like it was a known thing.”

 _Damn._   Angel glanced back at Faith.  Whatever this ‘known thing’ was, it had triggered something deep and bad in the Slayer’s psyche.  “What?” he asked, risking another look at Eliot.  “What did you say?”

“Nate thinks she’s his kid.”

Angel blinked.  “You heard wrong,” he said finally.  “They knew each other when Ford was studying for the priesthood.  She calls him padre because she knew him when he was Father Nate.”

Eliot shook his head.  “I didn’t hear wrong.  Boss-man’s not this torn up because of some priest-thing.  He thinks she’s his biological kid.”

 _Faith’s father?_   Angel’s mind was racing.  “Give us a sec,” he said to Eliot, indicating the door.  To his relief, the man didn’t argue, glancing once more at Faith before backing out of the room.

He heard a soft exhalation of breath behind him, and turned to see Faith bringing herself back under control.  “Talk to me,” he said gently.  Her emotional walls were starting to snap back into place, but under the circumstances Angel wasn’t sure that was a good thing.  “Faith?”

Her eyes met his.  “I’m all right.  Sorry about that.”  She laughed, but it was shakier than it should have been.  “Not exactly what I expected to hear, yanno?”

“Is there a chance he’s right?”  Angel sensed he was entering dangerous waters by asking the question, but he couldn’t leave it alone.  “Could Ford be your father?”

Faith snorted.  “Dude, for all I know you could be my father.  I met the man whose name’s on my birth certificate…doesn’t mean he’s the guy.  Mom wasn’t exactly the most reliable source of information.”

Angel sighed.  They couldn’t leave the chase – every second they waited left the vampires with more time to get Orpheus out on the streets, putting more people at risk.  Still…leaving Faith on her own after news like this wouldn’t end well either.  “Come with us,” he said.  “You’re right – I shouldn’t take a cripple for back up.  It’s tacky.”  He smiled.  “Bragging.”

She smiled back at him at least, but shook her head.  “Eliot’s sure his guys are heading this way.  Somebody needs to hook up with them – keep them out of the messy stuff.”

 _And if it gives you a chance to confront Daddy Nate,_ Angel realized, _so much the better._   “Listen to his side of the story before you do anything,” he said, taking her face in his hand.

The smile she gave him was genuine this time.  “I promise, boss.  No punching until I hear the old man out.”

**************************************

The sun was just disappearing over the horizon when they pulled into the parking lot of the Seaport Hotel.  “You know,” Sophie said as they got out of the car, “if he’s determined to face this, you’re not going to stop him.”

 _She’s right_ , Nate told himself.  “I just want to make sure we’re not ending up with a bigger body count,” he said.  “We don’t know what’s in Eliot’s head right now.  He’s off-line, dealing with the death of his twin brother, and the trauma of his attack.  He’s either going after Angel for answers, or tracking down the vampires.  Either way…”

“Vampire,” Parker said, pointing across the parking lot.  Two figures – one tall, one short with shoulder-length hair, were walking quickly across the VIP lot.  _Eliot and Angel._

 

“No sign of Faith,” Nate muttered, scanning the surrounding area.  The two men appeared to be headed for an automobile.  Making his decision in a flash, Nate turned and tossed his keys to Sophie.  “We’ve got GPS on them,” he reminded Hardison.  “Follow them, but do not engage unless you think you can get Eliot out.”

 

“Where are you going?” Sophie asked.

 

“Playing a hunch,” Nate said.  He touched his ear significantly.  “Let me know when you land – I’ll join you.”

 

Turning his back on the team before Sophie could protest further, Nate jogged across the lot to the lobby of the hotel.

 

He knew there was a chance he’d read the situation wrong, that Faith was actually waiting for Eliot and Angel wherever the vampires had nested.  _And what are you going to say if she is waiting for you?_ he wondered as he rode the elevator up to the fifth floor.  One on one, the odds of him being able to keep his secrets and work the job would drop so far as to be almost nonexistent.

 

 _Cross that bridge when we come to it,_ he reminded himself, getting off the elevator and walking as confidently as he could manage to the door of Angel’s suite.

 

It was open.  Heart suddenly pounding in his chest, Nate, stepped over the threshold.  “Faith?”

 

There was no answer.  Exhaling softly, Nate took another couple of steps – eyes scanning what he could see of the place.  “Hello?  Is anybody here?”

 

He was in the suite’s sitting area when he finally saw her – sitting on the edge of the same window sill where several hours earlier Parker had tried to show them Angel was a vampire.  “Ah…the door was open,” he said, moving a little closer and trying to draw her attention from whatever she was looking at.  “Is everything okay?”

 

Something was wrong.  He couldn’t put his finger on precisely what, but it was suddenly all Nate could do to keep from backing away from the dark-haired young woman.

 

“Firecracker,” she said at last, turning from the window to face him – dark eyes shadowed with the stain of memory.  “She said he used to call me his ‘little firecracker’.  Was that you she was talking about?”

 

Nate’s heart twisted in his chest.  “It’s what I used to call her,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.  “I didn’t…I didn’t know you existed back then.”

 

Anger flushed across her face.  “Oh, bullshit.  I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and you had to have known.  It’s why you used to stare at me back in Belmont.  The girls all used to kid me that you were having impure thoughts about me, but you knew back then, didn’t you?”  She leapt to her feet, hands clenched so tight into fists, the skin across her knuckles gleamed white in the low lamplight.  “Didn’t you?”

 

Nate raised his hands, taking an involuntary step back from her anger.  “I didn’t,” he said.  “Not at the time.”  Face to face, the excuse sounded just as lame as he’d always known it would.  Sighing heavily, he lowered his hands.  “I didn’t ask.  Ellie had named Georgie as your father, and it was easier to go with that than to face the possibility that I’d had a child with her…that I’d walked out on my own…”  Words failed him, and he shrugged helplessly – knowing that Faith couldn’t possibly hate him more than he hated himself in that moment.

 

Tears spilled down her cheeks.  “Do you know what you did to us?  Do you know how it feels thinking about your car and your money and your perfect fucking life, knowing where you left us?  Where you left her?”

 

“Perfect life?”  Nate laughed bitterly.  “Hardly that.  And you have to believe me Faith – I didn’t know at first.  Yes, I suspected when we met at Belmont, but by that time …”  His voice died in his throat again.  “I loved your mother very much.  I would have done anything for her if I’d known.”

 

“Anything except stick around,” she growled.  “Anything except admit who you were when you had the chance.”

 

Tears burned his eyes.  “I was going to say something when this was all over.  This may be just another day at the office for you, Faith, but I don’t know how to work in ‘hi, did you know I might be your father’ around vampire attacks.  I’m sorry.”

 

Silence stretched between them.

 

“I wasn’t strong enough to defy my father,” Nate said finally, forcing himself to maintain eye contact with Faith.  “He wanted me out of the life, remember?  And he was connected enough to make it happen.  When I finally told him about your mother, he had me shipped off to boarding school.”  _You should have tried harder…_

 

He swallowed hard against a lump in his throat.  “By the time I saw Ellie again, she’d hooked up with Georgie.  I knew he and Gable had her hooked on drugs, but I couldn’t prove anything.”

 

Faith’s expression darkened.  “You knew Gable?”  There was something cold and deadly hidden deep in the question; Nate shivered involuntarily.

 

He nodded.  “He was a pig – the worst sort of excuse for a human being – but we needed an enforcer.  Even at seventeen, he was a good one.”

 

“He was your friend?”  Again, Nate sensed there was more to the question than he was hearing.

 

He shook his head.  It was easy to be honest where Gable was concerned.  “I would have killed him if I could,” he said – and meant every word.  “If your mother had given me even the slightest reason – if she’d just admitted even once that he was the one who got her hooked…”

 

Faith snorted.  “I was twelve when I figured it out.  Don’t know how a smart guy like you missed it.”

 

There was nothing Nate could say to that.  “Faith, I can’t change what I did or didn’t do.  Maybe I should have asked more questions – maybe I should have fought harder for Ellie and for you.”  He paused, steeling himself for the one thing he needed to ask – the one thing he suspected he had no right to ask from her.  “I’d…I’d like to have the tests done.  If you’re willing – settle the issue once and for all.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faith and Nate reach a truce, but there's still a job to do and a teenage boy to save.  The Leverage team remains committed to doing the job, but Eliot is running out of time. __

_  
My father.   
_   
The words didn’t even sound right in her head.Her father was a loser, who’d never given a damn about her, and who’d died in jail when she was eighteen years old.Nate was a faintly pleasant memory from a very dark time in her life.

 

Nothing more.

 

_ Listen to his side of the story… _ Angel’s parting words to her. _I did,_ Faith thought. _I listened.He loved her, he didn’t know, he was scared…boo-fucking-hoo._

__

_ Doesn’t change anything. _ She’d made her peace with her past a long time ago.Her life wasn’t all sunshine and roses these days, but it was a good life.She helped people.She was more than just a mistake – more than the Slayer who never should have existed.

 

“You know she’s dead,” she said abruptly.“Gable killed her.”

 

It was the first time since she’d known him that Faith could believe Nate had grown up on the same streets she had.It was only a flash, but it was there.“I know,” he said.“I also know you tried to kill Gable for what he was doing to your mother, and I know that he and Georgie are both dead now.”He paused.“Hardison’s background checks are nothing if not thorough.”

 

Faith studied Nate for a long moment, trying to picture how different her life would have been with him in it. _Pretty damn different,_ she had to acknowledge.Now that her initial feelings of betrayal were waning, she also wasn’t sure she had it in her to punish him for things that might not have been his fault after all.“These tests,” she said finally.“Why get them?”

 

He didn’t answer right away.Faith was grateful that he wasn’t throwing some pre-packaged answer at her. _I might actually have to hurt him then,_ she thought.She needed honesty from him if she was going to consider anything he wanted.

 

“I’m as positive as I can be that the tests are going to say I’m your father,” he said at last.“The timing works, and while it’s not impossible that your mother cheated on me, I have to believe that she loved me as much as I loved her.”He smiled wryly.“Even if she did cheat on me, I would bet my life it wasn’t with Georgie.”

 

_ Admirable, _ Faith thought, _but not really an answer._ “So why find out for sure?”

 

Nate sighed.“I’d be lying if I said guilt wasn’t a part of it.”He shrugged.“Catholic, you know.And I don’t know if you need anything from me – or want anything, for that matter.But if we establish legal paternity, I can provide for you without anyone arguing the point.”

 

He’d lost her.“I don’t need your money,” she said.“I do all right.”

 

“Fair enough.”He smiled again – that small, wry grin that hinted at a sense of humor very much like Faith’s own.“I just wanted to make sure you knew buying your affection was still on the table.”He sobered.“I was thinking more in terms of your being able to inherit in the event of my death.”

 

“That’s morbid,” Faith observed.“But I get it.Providing for the future and all that.” _Not that I really expect to have one,_ she thought.Now was definitely not the time to have that discussion, however.

 

“I don’t have any other children,” Nate said.A shadow of…something…crossed his face.“And I’m not likely to at this point.Aside from that, though, I want you to be able to call on me for anything.”He sighed.“I can’t be a father to you, Faith.I know I’m too late for that – and all the reasons and excuses in the world won’t give us those years back.”

 

_ He’s making a good argument, _ Faith thought.She decided she was at least willing to meet him half way.“Let’s get out of this case,” she said, “and then we can talk more about your tests.”

**********************

The best that could be said was that the vampires hadn’t retreated far.“Docks district, Nate,” said Hardison into the coms, watching as Angel’s Plymouth came to a stop in front of them.“Four streets over from their first location.I’m sending you the information now.”

 

“Warehouses,” murmured Sophie, contemplating the scene in front of them. “Plenty of places to hide.”

 

“River,” added Parker. “Plenty of places to run.”

 

“You think they’re tryin’ to clear out?” asked Hardison. Thatpossibility had not occurred to him. _Not good._

 

Parker shrugged. “They’ve already been attacked once. They probably know that Faith and Angel haven’t left the area. Whatever they’re making, it’s too valuable to lose. If they’re not running, they’re ready to.” She paused, biting her lip, before adding, “They’ll be desperate. They won’t want any witnesses to survive.” 

 

“And Eliot’s heading right for them,” Hardison finished grimly.

 

“What can we do?” asked Sophie. She parked the Hyundai a few yards away from the cluster of buildings. The Charles was just visible in the distance, reflecting the light of the rising moon. “Nate told us not to engage, not unless we can get him out of there…and I really don’t know if we can.” 

 

Parker’s response was to pull her stake out of her pocket. Hardison and Sophie staredat her for a long moment, and then they both shook their heads vehemently.

 

“Parker…”

 

“No…”

 

“Do you have any better ideas?!” Parker demanded. “Nate told us to get Eliot out. Eliot won’t _get_ out until the vampires are dead.”

 

“Yeah, and did you see what they did to him the first time around?!” Hardison demanded. He shook his head. “No. No. We need another plan.”

 

“I’m all ears,” growled Parker, rolling her eyes and slinging herself out of the car. “In the meantime…”

 

“Parker!” called Sophie, hurrying after her. “Wait!”

 

“Wait!” echoed Hardison with a yelp of fright, realizing that he’d suddenly been left alone. He scrambled out of the car, and hurried after the women. “Wait, Parker! Woman, _you’ve got the stake!_ ”

 

Eventually, he and Sophie got Parker to stop – even if it was only long enough to pull some pieces off the nearest crate and turn them into makeshift stakes for Hardison and Sophie. 

 

“You’re serious,” said Hardison flatly, looking directly at Parker. “You’re really gonna fight these things face-to-face.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

The hacker sighed, then reached into his pocket and pulled out three identical objects that glittered in the street lights. He passed one to Parker and the second to Sophie – keeping the last one for himself.

 

“Crosses?” Sophie asked, holding hers up to see it better.The tiny silver pendent spun on the end of its chain, throwing off glints of light.“Hardison, you’re brilliant!”

 

Parker grinned like a kid at Christmas as she fastened her necklace around her throat.

 

“I was really hopin’ it wouldn’t come to this,” Hardison admitted with a shrug. “’Cause, y’know, I got a thing about sharp pointy objects, especially if they’re in the mouth of a thing that shouldn’t exist and that has an unhealthy obsession with my jugular vein. But I am nothin’ if not prepared. Not sure how helpful these’ll be, but they might at least stop ‘em takin’ a bite out of us.” 

 

Parker actually hugged him. Hardison allowed himself to enjoy the contact for a moment, before reminding himself to get serious again. “Let the record show, however, that I am still _seriously_ opposed to this plan. I mean…Eliot’s the one who wades in and beats guys until they stop movin’. I get that. I respect that. That is how he does things. Weare not Eliot. No offence to my man, but I really think we can use our heads to solve this problem. Until we see exactlywhat we’re dealin’ with, I say we put the ‘pause’ button on Operation Helsing. Deal?”

 

Sophie nodded. “I agree. We need more information before we make out final move, and we need to find Eliot.”

 

Parker nodded, a little reluctantly. “I wanna see ‘em explode into dust.”

 

“Believe me, so do I,” said Hardison.“I promise you, we will save a couple of vampires especially for you and I to poke with a stick. Afterwe save our man and get the job done. Deal?”

 

Parker looked for a second like she was going to continue arguing.Finally she sighed.“Deal.”

 

“Cool.” Hardison hefted his stake and slipped his necklace on, trying to feel brave and ready and failing miserably. “Let’s do this.” 

***********************

Whatever was driving Eliot Spencer had to give out soon.Angel had watched, incredulous, as he climbed a maintenance ladder one-handed to the roof of the warehouse without any help whatsoever. 

 

He shouldn’t have been standing, let alone pulling off physical maneuvers that would have been challenging for people in much better condition than he currently was. 

 

_ Maybe Lindsey did something to him _ , Angel wondered idly, as he crouched at the edge of a roof hatch and watched the bustle of activity below. _Cast some sort of spell to make him like this._ He honestly wouldn’t have put it past his old enemy. 

 

Judging by the little shiver that went through Eliot when Angel casually mentioned the possibility, his companion hadn’t put it past his brother either. “He suggested it, once. Told him if he ever did something like that to me, I’d break his neck.”

 

“How do you know he didn’t?” Angel asked.“Because – no offense – you really should be dead by now.”

 

Eliot grinned.“Just tougher than I look, is all.‘Sides, Lindsey was never one to push his help on someone who didn’t want it.” 

 

Angel considered that for a second, weighing Eliot’s assessment against his own experiences.“Doesn’t sound like the Lindsey I knew.”

 

Eliot shrugged, turning his eyes on their quarry once more.“Guess you didn’t know him, then.” He was watching the comings and goings on the outside of the warehouse, between the building and a fairly large speedboat tied up at the river’s edge.

 

“I count twenty inside,” Angel said, turning his attention back to the interior of the building. “Bad news is that includes five hostages.”

 

“Any of ‘em look like our guy?”Eliot asked.

 

“He’s in there,” Angel said, identifying the teenager from a photo Eliot had shown him on his smart phone.“Far as I can tell from up here, he’s still human at least.

 

Eliot didn’t react to that information. “Same three go in and out,” he reported.“Looks like they’re loading up. We don’t get ‘em tonight, then we don’t get ‘em. Two guards. One at the throttle, ready to move.” 

 

“If we can keep the ones inside from running to the rescue, we might be able to keep the boat from leaving,” Angel said thoughtfully.

 

“Are they payin’ attention?” Lindsey asked.

 

Angel smiled ruefully.“Doesn’t look like it. From the looks of things, I’d say some of them have been sampling the merchandise.”

 

“Fine by me,” Eliot said, getting to his feet with a groan, and working the aches out of his shoulders. “Top priority is the hostages. They’re why we’re here in the first place.” 

 

As much as he hated to risk losing that much Orpheus, Angel was forced to agree.Any fight that broke out was guaranteed to put the hostages in danger. _And that’s not even considering any hostages that might already be on the boat,_ he thought, shaking his head.

 

They would need to be subtle – not an easy task when the only person he had to rely on at the moment was little more than a walking corpse himself. _Note to self,_ he thought. _Next time bring the vampire slayer to the vampire brawl._ If they pulled this off, Faith was going to kill him for being so reckless.

 

Fresh movement in the warehouse caught his eye.Angel peered into the shadows, and gasped in spite of himself – a split second before Eliot made a similar sound. 

 

“What’s going on?” Angel asked, not daring to look up from what was happening below him.

 

“No,” breathed Eliot.“Oh no, no, no.” 

 

It was the first time Angel had heard real fear in Eliot’s voice, and the sheer, helpless terror feeding into that one small word was enough to make Angel pay attention. “What’s happening?” he asked, keeping his voice calm and level. _Don’t need him losing control now – not when we’re so close._

 

“Get over here now!” snapped Eliot, not bothering to keep his voice level anymore.

 

Angel snorted quietly.“I don’t think you want me to do that.”

 

“Why not?”

 

Angel sighed.“Because I’m currently looking down at…Parker, didn’t you call her? Yeah. Parker’s crawling through the rafters right now. Looks like she’s going to make a try for the hostages.” 

 

“ _What_?”

 

He risked a glance over his shoulder. Eliot was standing on the edge of the roof, looking genuinely torn between his need to keep an eye on whatever scene was unfolding down by the boat and a desire to come to Parker’s aid and defense. 

 

Angel stayed where he was long enough to catch Parker’s eye. The little blonde thief looked up at him, eyes wide with surprise as she stood balanced precariously on a support beam. She was wearing a harness, and carrying some sort of rigging mechanism slung over her shoulder. _Probably to get the hostages out,_ Angel decided. 

 

He held up a hand, silently ordering her to wait, and then went to see what was causing Eliot so much distress. 

 

It wasn’t hard to work out. Two figures had approached the two guards at the docks. Angel recognized them instantly as part of the entourage that Nate had brought with him earlier that day. _Hardison and Sophie._ Sophie had an arm wrapped around Hardison’s throat, and was all but dragging him towards the vampires. For his part, Hardison was visibly struggling against her grip. 

 

“You think something happened?” asked Angel.

 

Eliot swallowed hard, then shook his head. “It’s just a con,” he muttered, sounding as if he were trying to reassure himself more than Angel. “Just a con. It’s Sophie.It has to be a con.” With a supreme effort, he finally managed to tear his gaze away from the scene and look directly at Angel. “What’s Parker doing?”

 

“A pretty decent spider impression,” said Angel. He did not look away from Hardison and Sophie. He remembered from their few conversations how goodthe woman was at playing people, but it was dark and she’d been in over her head to begin with. _Who knows?_ Maybe her teammate was about to become her first post-mortem meal.

 

Eliot was already heading for the ladder back down to the ground. Rolling his eyes, Angel followed.

*******************************

All the way down, Eliot debated with himself over what direction to go – back up Sophie and Hardison, or help Parker?

 

In the end, he chose Parker.If Sophie was running a game – _on the vampires_ – he didn’t know the parameters, and any interference from him could put both her and Hardison in real danger.If she wasn’t, then it was too late, and the best thing Eliot could do was help make sure Parker and the hostages escaped the warehouse intact.

 

Reaching the ground, Eliot edged towards the open bay doors.His chest hurt and his head hurt, and he’d already escaped death at least once in the last forty-eight hours.

 

He wasn’t alone in a warehouse full of vampires and panicky humans, however, trying to accomplish the impossible.

***********************************

_ It’s just another part…just another con. _ Sophie kept repeating the litany in her head, as she came within sight of the vampires loading the ship. _You do this every day of your life._

 

Never against creatures who couldn’t even be remotely mistaken for human, however.It was a struggle not to react as she got her first close-up look at one.The tips of his fangs showed beneath a savagely curled lip, and his yellow eyes practically glowed in the moonlight.His skull looked like a throw-back to the dawn of time, or some sort of space alien.She made a mental note to ask Hardison what he thought if they made it out.

 

“Hello!” she said brightly, looking the vampire up and down with what she hoped was an appreciative leer.“Aren’t you cute?”In an effort to keep from drifting too far into Dracula territory, she’d decided on bubble-headed mall rat as her base character template.Hardison had assured her that the image of long capes and mush-mouthed accents was definitely not done anymore.

 

_ Besides, _ she thought. _He was a man, once._ And there wasn’t a man walking that Sophie Devereaux couldn’t eventually bend to her will.

 

The vampire stepped closer, checking her out as thoroughly as she’d looked him over.Sophie suddenly envied Hardison his role in the con.He was supposed to be terrified, and if he was feeling even part of what she felt in that moment, he wouldn’t have been acting.

 

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the vampire said, his voice low and menacing.

 

“Really?”Sophie pouted.“I heard I could get some of the good stuff here.”She widened her eyes and forced herself to lean closer to the vampire.“You know…Orpheus,” she stage whispered.“I even brought my own human.”She jerked up on the back of Hardison’s shirt – forcing him almost nose to nose with the vampire.

 

The scream of terror that reverberated off the surrounding buildings was most assuredly real.“Can’t you give a girl a fix?” Sophie asked, as the vampires around them laughed.“I can…make it worth your while.”

 

Her target exchanged knowing looks with some of the nearby vamps.“Tell Tony I’m taking a break,” he said finally to the one standing closest to him.“I’ll be back in fifteen.”  
  


 

_ Don’t count on it, _ Sophie thought, keeping her artificial smile of delight firmly in place.The crude stake in her pocket was a comforting weight.

 

The vampire came around and took her by her free arm.“Let me show you where we keep the good stuff,” he said.“And you and I can discuss…payment.”

*************************

“This is a stupid idea, Nate,” Faith said.“And believe me – I know from stupid ideas.”

 

They’d been arguing for the entire length of time it took to ride the elevator from Angel’s suite to the ground floor.“No,” Nate repeated.“What’s stupid is standing here while my team…while my friends…charge in and get themselves massacred.”The door sliding open on the well-maintained lobby forced him to lower his voice.“I’m coming with you.”

 

He met Faith’s disapproving gaze squarely.After a moment, she chuckled ruefully and shook her head.“You are a stubborn sonofabitch, I’ll give you that.”She paused, looking him over.“Good thing you’re in shape, otherwise you’d never fit.”

 

She turned and started across the lobby before Nate could manage so much as a “Hey!” of protest.He broke into a jog, and still didn’t manage to catch up with her until they’d cleared the front door.

 

As soon as he reached her side, Faith passed him a stake.“Defense only,” she said, not looking at him or breaking stride.“Believe me when I say this is harder than it looks.”

 

They had reached the VIP parking lot by the time Nate figured out a secure place to store his new weapon.Faith’s Streetfighter was tucked neatly behind a Lexus; Nate’s stomach did a slow, queasy roll as the reality of riding double on a motorcycle suddenly slapped him in the face.

 

“Something for you,” he said, as Faith swung onto the bike.Reaching in his jacket pocket, he pulled out Eliot’s abandoned com and passed in to her.“It goes in your ear.”He tapped his own ear to illustrate.

 

Faith studied the small device for a second, before sweeping her hair to one side and fitting it in place.Nate could tell when she had it, because her eyes widened in surprise.“Freaky,” she said.“Can they hear us?”

 

“Yes, but you’d have to actually say something to get their attention,” Nate admitted.“We’re so used to wearing them that we tend to tune out background noise.”He sighed, trying to ignore the sounds of Sophie and Hardison and their vampire escort.“Plus, the wrong word at the wrong time…”

 

Faith nodded, understanding immediately.

***********************************

They managed to make it all the way below deck, only drawing minimal attention. _He’s done this before,_ Hardison realized.The thought gave him no comfort whatsoever as he made a show of struggling against Sophie’s hold on him.

 

Their escort led them into a small and dingy cabin.A cot was in one corner, and minimal furniture.Hardison was impressed to see that Sophie never broke character once, even though he knew she had to be as disgusted as he was at what the vampire hoped was about to play out.

 

“Shall we have a drink first?” the vampire asked, stepping in close on Sophie.Hardison felt her grip loosen, and prepared himself to move.

 

“I think that’s a good idea,” Sophie said.“You look a little dry.”

 

The vampire never knew what hit him.In a flash, Sophie had grabbed him by the arms, and spun him directly into Hardison’s stake.The world seemed to freeze for a moment, and then the body crumbled to dust between them.

 

Hardison suspected the look of shock and relief on Sophie’s face was a mirror of his own. _Oh.My.God,_ he thought, glancing from the stake, to the pile of dust on the floor. _We did it.We actually freaking did it._

 

“We’re in, Parker,” Sophie said.“I’m going for the hostages.”She locked eyes with Hardison.

 

He nodded.“I got the Captain.”

 

As plans went, it wasn’t their best.Could really use Nate’s brain on this, he thought.Of course that assumed Nate would have been on board with what they were doing, and it was clear to Hardison at least that was so not going to be the case.

 

So they would do what they could, and try not to get dead.“Just wanted to remind you,” Hardison said before he and Sophie parted ways, “that we’re following _Parker’s_ lead on this.”

 

“As inspirational farewells go, not your best,” Sophie said.“Good luck.”

 

They headed off in opposite directions; Hardison saying a quiet prayer over the thumping of his heart that they would meet again.

 

_ You know this is suicide. _ Yeah, he knew it, but he also knew that he had just shoved a piece of wood into a bloodsucking creature of the night and watched it dissolve into dust.In spite of his terror, Hardison smiled.For one shining moment, he’d been as wickedly powerful as Eliot, and that knowledge warmed every corner of his geeky soul.

*******************************

The harness got her into the warehouse, but it didn’t take Parker long to realize that it wouldn’t get the hostages out.From this angle, as she lowered herself to the ground, she could tell that there were a lot more vampires than she’d originally counted on. _Where the heck are they coming from?_

 

As if that weren’t bad enough, she could also tell now that the hostages were in no condition to move quickly.She couldn’t tell precisely what had been done, but they were collectively much more sluggish than they should have been.She didn’t have the kind of time she needed to rig them individually into the harness and winch them up to safety, and she couldn’t trust that they would cooperate anyway.

 

She touched down near a pile of boxes, crates and sacks at one end of the warehouse, relatively near where the hostages were chained.Unsnapping herself from the line, she slipped under cover and waited to make sure she hadn’t been spotted.

 

Angel was here – that was a plus.She glanced up, but couldn’t see through the open roof hatch from this angle.Parker pulled out the stake he’d given her. _Another plus._

 

If Angel was here, Eliot was probably with him.Under ordinary circumstances, Parker would consider that a big plus, but she found herself really hoping that her teammate would be smart and stay on the roof.

 

A glint of light caught her eye, and Parker realized there was a window very nearby – shielded from at least some of the activity going on.That was her way out…assuming she could get the hostages unchained, past the watching vampires, and to the boat.Assuming Hardison and Sophie had secured the boat.

 

She peeked through the slats of one of the crates, taking in the scene and analyzing what she was up against.

 

Holy crap, there were a lot of vampires. 

 

Parker swallowed nervously, toying anxiously with the necklace Hardison had given her, and waiting for the right moment. When it came, she darted out from behind her crate and crept towards the cluster of humans.A few of them were alert enough to see her coming – Parker shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips, silently begging them to keep quiet.

 

Luck was on her side. They did. 

 

The padlock was ridiculously simple.Out came the lock picks, and within seconds all the hostages were free. Parker saw them all start to stand as a group, and immediately waved them back down. _No – bad!_ Too much movement would draw the vampires’ attention.

 

_ One at a time. _

__

She shunted a random off towards the window, holding a cautionary finger to her lips. He nodded, terrified, and scurried off towards his escape. Parker stayed where she was, hunching down and folding herself up as though chained and scared like the rest of them. She couldn’t keep the vampires from checking on the hostages while she was ferrying people out, but maybe they’d just count heads. _Maybe they wouldn’t notice faces._

 

She waited until the vampires looked their way again. As a group, the hostages flinched away from the sudden attention.The vampires laughed – their fangs bared, and their eyes glowing yellow.Parker felt a shiver run down her spine.

 

She’d called it right. They were too cocky and too drugged out to notice a difference in faces. After a few catcalls and threats, they returned to their own amusement.

 

Parker picked another hostage that might not be missed, waved her on, and shifted into her place. 

 

She waited until the vampires looked their way again. She waited until they looked away. 

 

She waved the next hostage out, and took her place in the bunch. That made three she’d saved, assuming they made it to the boat. 

 

It left three to be saved, not including her.

 

She waited until the vampires looked their way again. She waited until they looked away.

 

She waved the next hostage out.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Battles, battles everywhere.  The dust is flying fast and furious - and just as it's starting to settle, the tension between Eliot and Angel comes to an explosive, nearly fatal conclusion.

The bridge was occupied. The captain had his back to Hardison, but glanced over his shoulder as a bad floorboard creaked. 

 

Hardison knew for a fact that he had never moved that fast before, or would ever move that fast again. Before he had even realized he needed to hide, he was crouching out of sight, doing his absolute bestnot to breathe. 

 

He waited, until he was sure the captain hadto have turned back around. He waited until he could not wait a second longer, and then he got to his feet, lunged, and tackled the man. 

 

Hardison realized, within three seconds of hitting the floor, that he’d called it right. The captain wasa vampire. 

 

Fortunately, he’d been lucky enough to land on top as they fell, straddling the monster’s chest. Unfortunately, as he watched, the face of a man became the face of a monster and it _snarled_ at him – baring fangs that were far too sharp and far too long.

 

Hardison didn’t think – couldn’t think. He just struck. He wasn’t even certain that he rememberedwhere the heart was supposed to be, but he struck with the stake anyway – jamming it with all his might into the vampire’s chest.

 

The vampire went rigid, its expression frozen in mid-roar. Then, as Hardison watched, it slowly began to disintegrate. Flesh became nothing but dust that crumbled under Hardison’s weight, and the hacker collapsed to the ground as the vampire disappeared.

 

“And _that’s_ how we do it,” he said, smiling broadly as he stared down at the dust pile, and the full weight of what he’d done washed over him. “Aw, yeah. Bet you regret givin’ up your pulse _now_ , huh? Oh, that’s right! You can’t, ‘cause you’re _dust_ in the wind! All right! Just sweep you under the carpet and be on my way…”

 

“Hardison!”

 

He would tell himself later that his yelp of fright didn’t sound _that_ girlish. When he whirled around, stake at the ready, it was only Sophie who’d come up behind him. Her own stake was also up, and there was dust on her clothes. 

 

Then Hardison saw that she wasn’t alone – there were also about a half dozen people behind her. 

 

They all had stakes.

 

“We good?” he asked.

 

Sophie nodded. “I had to leave some of them down below,” she admitted. “They’re going to need doctors soon. But this lot…” she gestured at her miniature mob. “…seemed ready to fight.”

 

There were a few grim mutters and nods from the crowd, and much brandishing of pointy wood. Hardison swallowed. 

 

“Right,” he said, getting back to his feet. “Right, right, _right_. One more time.”

 

The job was done quickly and, for an untrained band of former hostages, comparatively quietly. The boat was a few yards from the warehouse, and so they had some room to maneuver without fear of retaliation by the rest of the pack. The mob, led by Hardison and Sophie, split into two groups and pounced on the boat’s last two guards. One person covered the mouth, two people held the monster in place, and Hardison and Sophie delivered the killing blows. It was all done in five minutes, and then they were back on the boat and establishing some makeshift defenses. No vampires, at least, would be escaping on this river. 

 

The first escapee came running towards them from the warehouse a moment later 

*******************************

Two hostages were left, not including Parker.One of them was a gawky teenage boy who Parker suspected was their clients’ son. 

 

The time for caution had passed.The next time the vampires looked their way, they wouldn’t be able to help noticing their group of prisoners had gotten a lot smaller.Parker waved the first one away, gave her a ten-count, and then gestured at the boy to run.

He’d barely gotten to his feet, before they were spotted.

**********************************

“All right,” Faith said.“When I stop, you need to bail.I’ll give you what I can, but I’m going to need to drop the bike pretty quick.”

 

_ Thank God for the coms, _ Nate thought.Conversation would have been impossible over the roar of air rushing past them as the Streetfighter sped towards their goal.“Got it,” he said, trying not to think too hard about the logistics of having only seconds to bail off the back of a motorcycle. 

 

“Defense only,” Faith reminded him.“You get your people and get out. Leave the heavy stuff to me and Angel.”

************************************

A collective snarlrang throughout the warehouse. Parker scrambled to her feet, and shoved the boy towards the window. “Run! _Run!_ ” she cried. 

 

It took too long for him to get started – proof they’d been keeping the hostages drugged – but he finally started running towards the window. Parker stumbled after him. She couldn’t run ahead, she couldn’t leave him behind. After everything they’d gone through and everything that had happened, she couldn’t bear to just failthis job. Not when she had their target literally in hand.

 

She ended up all but dragging the boy along beside her, as fifteen sets of fangs bared for blood closed in on their position. They wouldn’t be slowed down for long by the crates and debris, not for long if the speed they were moving was any indication.

 

“Hey! Bloodsuckers!” 

 

Parker felt her stomach clench as the cry rang throughout the warehouse, but she didn’t look around. She didn’t need to – she knew who had shouted. _God, why couldn’t you have stayed on the roof?_

__

She kept running, dragging their target along beside her. Eliot was here, now, and he was fighting, and the smartest thing to do would be to get the last of the humans to safety. That was what he was buying time for her to do, that was why he was fighting. She all but shoved the younger boy out the window, then turned back to take in the scene.

 

Eliot hadn’t come alone, at least. Angel was with him. But Eliot was still _here_ , and he _shouldn’t_ have been! 

 

Parker pulled out her stake and leapt into the fray. The nearest vampire had his back to her as he flanked Eliot, keeping her teammate penned in so that other vampires could get their hits in on him. Parker didn’t think – she just leapt and struck. 

 

_ Dust. _ The monster collapsed into dust in her hands. It never even had time to turn around, before dissolving into carpet sweepings. Parker froze for a second, stunned – staring at the dust, the dust that had once been a monster.

 

_ I can do this. _

__

She had to.

 

Eliot wouldn’t last much longer.

 

Parker charged, barreling into her next target. As it turned towards her, she plunged her stake into its chest before it could get a grip on her. Dust blew into her face this time, making her cough, but she kept running. _Two down, bunches more to go._

__

She was fighting to get to Eliot, because he was still surrounded and fading fast. The nest at large was aware of her presence now, but the bulk of the vampires had chosen to stay focused on mauling the wounded man further, instead of going for a fresh target.

 

Four of them opted for the fresh target instead. 

 

“Uh-oh.” Parker turned and leapt straight up, grasping for the edge of a large storage crate behind her. Her fingers just managed to close on the edge of the top lid – it was _so_ much easier going down than coming up. She heaved herself up and looked down at her attackers. 

 

They _really_ wanted some fresh blood. One of them tried to imitate her maneuver, and leap up after her. His jump was slightly more effective; he made it by more than the tips of his fingers, heaving himself up on his arms to snarl at her. Parker reacted instinctively, kicking him in the face. He grabbed her by the leg and _heaved_ , dragging Parker flat and making to pull her down off her perch. Parker yelped in fright as she was pulled along, but managed to save herself by grabbing the very edge of the crate.

 

Unfortunately, this put her nose to nose with the vampire. 

 

He was bigger, stronger, and deadlier, but Parker was faster. She struck. He died. 

 

She clambered back up and waited for the next attack. 

 

Because of the height of her position, she was the first one to realize that the vampires were splitting into two groups.One was staying behind, keeping Angel and Eliot busy.The others were running for the outside.

 

At first, Parker thought they were just running away.Then she realized their mode of escape was the boat.

 

“Hardison, Sophie!” she yelled into her com. “Vampires heading your way!”

 

_ “Oh, god!”  _ yelped Hardison. _“Um…uh…Sophie!”_

__

_ “I’ll do what I can! Everyone, come on!” _

__

Parker winced. There were at least three vampires outside the warehouse now. That would be plenty. Hardison and Sophie had apparently managed to eliminate the vampires on the boat, but they’d had surprise on their side. They wouldn’t now. 

 

Eliot was offline, but he had heard her. As Parker watched, he staked one vampire, then whipped round and took out another on the backswing. She could tell he was fighting solely on desperation, now. Even adrenaline could only carry him so far.

 

“Angel!” Eliot yelled. “Protect the hostages!”

 

Angel obeyed, pausing just long enough to stake one last vampire before racing after the three going for the boat. None of the remaining vampires were stupid enough to follow him, turning instead to the much easier task of finishing off Eliot and Parker.

 

Refusing to leave Eliot to handle everything himself, Parker vaulted off her crate and landed on the nearest vampire – using the momentum from her fall to stake him into dust. Scrabbling to her feet, she met a fist coming the other way. 

 

The vampire who had attacked, struck her with the force of a sledgehammer, knocking Parker back to the ground and stunning her with the force of the blow. Lunging forward, it grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her up and towards it.Parker struggled and kicked, but it was a bad angle.She couldn’t get any force behind her punches anymore, couldn’t bring her leg back far enough to kick. He pulled her against his chest, bared his fangs, went for her neck…

 

…and collapsed, into dust.

 

Parker found herself face-to-face with Eliot.It was clear that her teammate was on his very last legs. 

 

The last of the nest came for them in a rush. Parker positioned herself back-to-back with Eliot, and together they prepared to finish the job.

 

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” Eliot rasped. 

 

“You shouldn’t have left us!” Parker snapped. “You were _offline_!”

 

“I was going to handle this! _I_ fight the battles. That’s _my_ job, not yours!”

 

He boxed an oncoming vampire in the ears. As it staggered back, dazed, Parker jabbed her arm over Eliot’s shoulder and pierced its chest. _Dust._ Eliot yanked her behind him suddenly; another vampire had been almost on her while she’d had her back turned. He dealt the monster an apparently stinging head butt, but it retaliated with an uppercut to the stomach that drove Eliot to his knees. 

 

Parker heard bone give way as the blow connected. She whipped around, preparing to perform the “leap-and-stake” maneuver that was already becoming her favorite. 

 

The vampire grabbed her arm, cut her legs out from under her, flipped her over its shoulder, and slammedher into the unyielding concrete floor. Parker felt the breath knocked from her lungs. Her vision swam, but she still saw the last two vampires left in the building join up with the one that had finally defeated them and loom quite effectively over her and Eliot.

 

Parker tried to struggle back to her feet, but one of the vampires put a foot on her chest and leaned his weight into it. She managed to lift her head enough to see that Eliot had also been restrained – both arms had been wrenched behind his back by Vampire Number Two. He struggled like a trapped animal, but it was useless. 

 

_ It was all useless. _

__

They’d both fought hard, but they’d finally lost. Now the only thing to do was to wait for the vampires to finish arguing over who got who. 

 

Parker knew that she should be angry at Eliot – if he hadn’t raced off, if he hadn’t let himself get careless, this probably would never have happened. They wouldn’t both be lying here, helpless and hurt, waiting for the vampires to finish arguing over who got who. 

 

But it still made her heart hurt when two vampires went for Eliot and only one went for her. Their eyes met, one last time, but Parker just couldn’t find the will and Eliot couldn’t find the strength to say goodbye. 

 

Headlights flooded the warehouse, in time to the sound of a motorcycle drawing closer and closer. The vampire holding her looked up in alarm. Parker looked up as well, more out of curiosity than hope, now. 

 

A Ducati Streetfighter shot through the open doors, two people riding it. The driver… _Faith_ …cut the engine, giving her passenger a split second to bail off the back of the bike before she laid it down and drew a stake. 

 

The vampire holding Parker snarled, and the thief winced as the pressure on her chest was suddenly relieved. She rolled over in time to see him charge Faith. She punched him across the face with what looked to Parker like the same amount of force that the vampire had previously used to punch Parker across the face. 

 

The monster went down – Faith dropped to one knee after it and plunged a stake into its chest.

 

_ Dust.  _

 

Her passenger was Nate, who was already racing towards Eliot. Their arrival had provided a few seconds of distraction, a few preciousseconds before the vampires sank their teeth into Eliot’s neck. To Parker’s amazement, Nate actually tackledthe vampire closest to him, knocking them both to the ground. Parker took advantage of the last vampire’s confusion to tackle the other.

 

Eliot was down – not moving – and Parker saw _red_. 

 

Faith came over to help Nate finish off his vampire. By that point, Parker had manhandled her opponent so that he was on the ground, she was sitting on him, and she was repeatedly punchinghim as hard as she could across the face – rage fueling her blows. 

 

“Parker! _Parker!_ ”

 

Parker didn’t hear Nate calling her name. She felt it, however, when he grabbed her around the waist and heaved her off the vampire with a strength she honestly hadn’t known that he possessed. She kicked and struggled against him for a few seconds, but rage was no help against Nate. 

 

Faith stepped into her field of vision, momentarily blocking Parker’s view of the dazed vampire. Parker saw her heave the monster up, saw her jab the stake forward, and saw the dust tumble to the ground.

 

Then, and only then, did Parker stop struggling.

 

Nate held onto her for a few more seconds, just to make sure, and then he set her back on her feet. Parker immediately took off running as soon as she was free. Nate made a grab for her and missed, but he needn’t have worried. 

 

Parker wasn’t looking for a fight anymore.

**********************************

When Nate saw who she was after, he broke into a run. Together, they managed to get Eliot off the ground, and settled on nearby shipping crate. He was still conscious, but only just. His breathing was labored, and Nate realized that one section of his chest was moving slightly differently than the rest, which could _not_ be good. He was bleeding from the head again – someone had hit him, and hard. 

 

“Eliot,” Nate whispered, putting a hand on the side of his hitter’s face to get his attention. Normally, even _touching_ Eliot when he was in such a state – so soon after a battle – would prompt a fairly violent reaction. 

 

Not this time. This time, it was only enough to get his attention. Eliot looked up at Nate with glazed, exhausted eyes. 

 

“Nate,” he murmured. 

 

Nate smiled in relief. _Good_. He could still register, still respond. He wasn’t doing either as well as Nate would have liked, but he knew he couldn’t expect too much of Eliot right now. 

 

“How are you?” Nate asked. He ran a hand lightly over Eliot’s chest, and froze – horrified – when Eliot let out a rattling gasp of pain. “Broken ribs…Eliot, can you breathe?”

 

To Nate’s complete and utter relief, Eliot managed a small, sardonic smile. “You…you see…me turnin’ blue?”

 

Despite the bravado, Nate felt him tense every time he took in a breath. Eliot would never show that he was in pain, not to them, but if _breathing_ had become this painful then they really had a problem. 

 

Keeping a hand lightly on Eliot’s shoulder to steady him, Nate peered into his eyes. _Pupils are uneven._ He’d probably gotten another concussion.

 

“Parker?”

 

Nate’s heart nearly broke. Eliot had roused himself, and was looking over Nate’s shoulder now, looking around the warehouse, looking for Parker. 

 

Faith stepped up next to them. She reached into her ear, carefully removed the com, and passed it over to Eliot. “She went out to check on the hostages. Your other two mentioned that they managed to put down the rest of the vamps. Probably helping play sheepdog.”

 

Eliot’s hands shook, but he managed to get his com unit back in place. “Parker?” he asked again.

 

_ “Eliot? Are you okay?!” _

__

Nate saw Eliot relax as he heard Parker’s voice, heard for himself that the crazy little thief was alive and well. “I’ll live,” he said. 

 

Nate, at that moment, silently promised his team that he would.

 

He and Faith spent the next five minutes tending to Eliot, assessing the damage and doing what they could in lieu of a proper hospital. Faith initially suggested trying to bind Eliot’s ribs and give him some relief, but after Nate showed her what he’d seen, she agreed that it was something best left to the professionals.

 

Outside, the rest of the team plus Angel were securing the former hostages onto the vampires’ boat, where they would now be taken to safety instead of to destruction. After a quick conference, it was decided that Hardison would stay on the boat – piloting it away from the warehouse and towards the nearest police station. 

 

Sophie, Parker, and Angel watched him go, and then returned to the warehouse. 

 

Nate could see Parker visibly holding herself back from running to Eliot and hugging him. Sophie just looked exhausted – hollow.

 

Angel, earning Nate’s eternal dislike, looked largely unfazed by what had happened. Faith went to him, while Sophie and Parker joined him and Eliot. 

 

“How are you?” Parker and Sophie asked Eliot, almost at the same time. Parker scooted onto the crate next to him. Sophie drew closer to Nate, allowing him to slip a comforting arm round her shoulders. She was shaking under his grip. 

 

“I’ll live,” Eliot repeated. Then, with a glare at Parker, “Don’t poke me.”

 

Parker shook her head, looking as though she were honestly about to cry. 

 

Nate took a deep breath, feeling an ache in his chest almost as acute as Eliot’s. With the exception of Hardison, who had a very clear job to do, the rest of his team was lost, scared, and hurt. He, at least, was largely unharmed. They neededa leader, now, more than ever before.

 

_ That’s my job, _ he thought – feeling completely unqualified for the role.

 

“Which one of you has my keys?” he asked suddenly.

 

Sophie pulled them out of her pocket and gave them an obliging jingle. Nate nodded. “Go.”

 

“I’ll go with,” Faith added, materializing beside him again. “Safety in numbers, yeah? Might still be some stragglers out there.”

 

Sophie nodded, seemingly grateful for the escort. “All right.”

 

Together, they headed towards the doors. Nate returned his attention to Eliot and Parker. “We’re going back to the hospital.” He saw Eliot’s jaw tighten, and leveled his “Eliot gaze” at the hitter. “No. Argument.” 

 

“Can’t,” Eliot rasped.“Got chased out.”

 

Nate smiled.“That’s actually easily fixed, now that we know all the facts.”

 

“Oh, yeah?”

 

Nate nodded. “Mm-hmm. We tell the truth.” As Eliot and Parker raised their eyebrows, he elaborated. “Your connection to Lindsey isn’t really hidden, from what we could tell. That means that the hospital should have been able to turn up the connection without much trouble. It’s out there for everyone to see, so we’ll make use of it. We have to.”

 

He paused, thinking.“Angel, a co-worker of Lindsey’s, found you in that warehouse and mistook you for him. Lindsey never told him that he had a twin brother, and so he signed you in under your brother’s name. Because you and Lindsey weren’t close, you never received word of his death and couldn’t correct them when they found the coroner’s report earlier. Hardison and Parker panicked and broke you out, when the whole thing could have been easily explained away.”

 

“That’s…what you’re…gonna tell them?”

 

He didn’t _want_ to. Eliot, although he never let them endanger the team, probably kept more secrets than any of them. Nate knew that part of the reason he stuck around was an unspoken agreement that no one would ask him to reveal any of those secrets – not unless it was absolutely necessary.

 

Tonight, however, it was absolutely necessary. Tonight, one of Eliot’s secrets _had_ endangered the team, more than ever before. Nate met Eliot’s gaze squarely.“If you didn’t want anyone to know, you should have covered your tracks better.” 

 

Eliot made to shrug, thought better of it, and did not reply. 

 

_ “Nate, I see the car. We’ll be back in a few moments.” _

__

They all heard Sophie’s reply. Eliot smiled bitterly as a thought seemed to occur to him. “You’re better than I gave you credit for, Soph. When I saw you down on the pier, I thought you might really have gotten yourself turned.”

 

_ “…I’m sorry.”  _ It sounded to Nate as though she meant it. _“I didn’t know you were watching.”_

__

“Well, if you hadn’t gone _offline_ ,” Parker suddenly snapped. Apparently on reflex, she reacted in her typical fashion of lightly shoving Eliot to accentuate her point. 

 

It was a reflexive reaction in _exactly_ the wrong time and place. The speed of the gesture and the complete lack of warning got past all of Eliot’s defenses. He let out a gasp of pain, doubling over to cover his side. 

 

Parker’s eyes went wide with horror as she realized just what she’d done. Before Nate could stop her, she’d slipped off the crate and was backing away.

 

“I-I’m…” she stammered. “I’m going to go wait for Sophie!” 

 

With that, she retreated from the warehouse, leaving Nate alone with Eliot and Angel. Nate ignored Angel – would have been happy if he could have ignored Angel for the rest of his life – and went to tend to Eliot again. It took a bit of work to convince Eliot to straighten up; doubling over was not healthy in such an extreme instance of blunt trauma. 

 

After a few, tense moments, however, he had convinced him to sit up straight again. Nate backed away, relieved. 

 

A few moments of tense silence passed before Eliot spoke.“We considered covering our tracks, once – erasing the connection. Wouldn’t have worked, not against Wolfram and Hart. It would have just made him look more suspicious.”

 

“Not that Wolfram and Hart had anything against suspicious activity,” added Angel. “I mean, even without hiding your existence, Lindsey _specialized_ in suspicious activity and it took them five years to get rid of him.”

 

“You mean it took _you_ five years to get rid of him.”

 

Nate had seen that look in Eliot’s eyes only a few times before. He flashed back to that last hellish day at their old offices, the night of the fixed boxing match, the first night he’d ever workedwith the man. The body was broken, but that lookwas still there, even now. Nate found himself taking another couple of steps back, and praying that Sophie got back soon with the car.He couldn’t stop what was about to happen.

 

No one could. 

 

Angel did not know Eliot. Angel did not know to step back when Eliot got that look in his eyes. He only shrugged, apparently without a care in the world. “Hey, _my_ issues with Lindsey were completely personal. Wolfram and Hart had their own way of handling things. I have to say, where they put him that one time was one of the most twisted hells I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen my fair share of twistedhells.”

 

He paused, meeting Eliot’s gaze without flinching.“Couldn’t really bring myself to pity him, though. Not after all he did for them at the start.” 

 

“Lindsey…Lindsey was a good man.”

 

Angel _laughed_. “I guess you really weren’t close, then. You didn’t see some of the things he did. You didn’t see him put my friends through agony, torture me with my dead sire. You weren’t there when he watchedwhile she slaughtered a room full of his colleagues and let him walk out unscathed.”He took a step closer to Eliot.“He represented a vampirethat tormented and preyed on women just about Parker’s age. He tried to turn my friends against me, he betrayed anyone and everyone sooner or later, he took a _dead man’s hand_ to replace his own when I chopped it off…”

 

Nate hadn’t noticed the sledgehammer, but somehow through the haze of pain from his injuries, Eliot had. Somehow, Eliot managed to muster enough desperate, vengeful strength to grab the sledgehammer one-handed, swing it round, and knock Angel to the ground with the force of the blow.

 

“Eliot!” Nate yelled, but his teammate didn’t even acknowledge him. He’d managed to get the fingers of his broken hand working well enough to grab the hammer with both hands and bring it down squarely on Angel’s head as the vampire tried to get back to his feet. He struck with the weapon, again and again, bringing it down on any bit of Angel that he could reach. 

 

“Eliot!” Nate cried again, more out of concern for Eliot than for Angel. He started forward, ready to risk any sort of injury to tear his hitter away…

 

…and froze.

 

As Eliot looked up, preparing for another blow, his eyes met Nate’s just for an instant. 

 

An instant was enough.

 

The look in his eyes was barely _human_.

 

Before Nate could even fully process what he’d seen, Eliot had returned to enacting his vengeance.

 

Headlights flooded the warehouse once again; Nate’s car pulling in through the open door.Sophie, Parker, and Faith bailed out as soon as they saw the fight taking place before them – yelling for Eliot to stop. Even Hardison joined in over the coms as the sounds of battle filtered through the lines. Nate added his voice to the din, praying that together they might be enough to snap Eliot out of his rage. 

 

It worked. When Eliot next looked up, and saw the looks of fear that surrounded him, he suddenly and finally stopped. The sound of the sledgehammer falling to the ground rang throughout the warehouse. 

 

Sophie, Parker, and Nate were already racing towards him, as Eliot sank to his knees. 

 

Nate knew that his hitter had finally gone one last step too far. As they all rushed to hold him upright, Eliot was suddenly seized by a coughing fit that left blood dripping from his mouth. His breathing, which had been noticeably painful before, seemed legitimately impaired now. Something rattled in his chest as he struggled for air, and he shookunder their grips as they held him. He was warm – _so warm_ – and Nate realized it was the heat of a fever setting in. 

 

Dimly he heard Faith talking, and realized she was calling 911. _Time to the nearest hospital less than ten minutes,_ he thought, drawing some comfort from the knowledge.Faith went outside to direct the ambulance in, Angel trailing in her wake. Nate suddenly hated him. Eliot’s last act had been to beat the vampire with all the strength he’d had left to him, and it hadn’t been enough to keep Angel down. 

 

It felt like hours before the ambulance arrived, hours with Eliot dying in their arms and their hopeless, helpless inability to do anything to save him. _I can’t do it,_ a small voice started whispering in Nate’s head. _I can’t go through it again._ He could feel himself shutting down, and tightened his grip on his friend.

 

Eventually, Faith came running in with the paramedics hot on her heels. Nate, Sophie, and Parker were pushed away, as the professionals gathered round Eliot, all talking at once to one another. 

 

Finally, he was loaded onto a stretcher and taken away to the waiting ambulance. Nate held onto Parker and Sophie, trying not to freak at the fact no one was answering their questions.

 

They weren’t allowed to ride with him. Nate, Sophie, and Parker followed the ambulance in Nate’s car. Faith followed on her bike – Angel followed in his Plymouth.

 

By the time they reached the hospital, Eliot was already in surgery. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate and Faith deal with their issues and make a plan for going forward, and no one (except Faith) is happy that Angel is still around.  Parker is especially unhappy about this turn of events.

Faith hung around the waiting room long enough to hear the preliminary assessment from the ER doctor who had triaged Eliot.  While they all agreed concussion was likely, it was a minor concern against the “extreme pulmonary laceration”, caused by prolonged physical activity while suffering from a case of “flail chest” and aggravated by “severe internal contusions and bleeding”.

And to make matters worse, the fever Nate had suspected was legit – sign of an infection in the bite he’d taken from one of his original attackers.

The one thing everyone refused to say was whether or not Eliot would be able to pull through.  “We’ve got our best people working on him,” was the most optimistic thing they were told, and Nate had practically attacked one poor intern just to get him to admit that much.

Sophie had stepped in at that point, steering Nate off to a corner and some private conversation.  Faith watched them for a moment, before the panic finally overwhelmed her.  Turning on her heel, she fled.

She was halfway to the parking lot when she finally managed to get herself under control.  _Too much,_ she thought, trying to slow her racing heartbeat.  There was too much grief – too many unanswered questions back there.

Too much of a possibility that Eliot could die.  _Or worse._   That was the thing that panicked Faith the most – there was always something worse than death waiting out there.

“They’re good people.”

Faith turned to see that Angel had come up behind her.  “One of those ‘good people’ tried to make a pancake out of you.”

The vampire was leaning against a support column for the overhead canopy they were currently standing under.  He shrugged.  “His brother tried the same move on me once.  Frankly I’ll take blunt trauma over getting staked or beheaded any day of the week.”

“And twice on Sundays,” Faith said, coming back to stand closer to him.  “You look all right.”

“I’ll be fine,” Angel reassured her.  “Wanted to see how you were doing?”

Faith leaned against the column opposite him, mirroring the vampire’s pose.  “They are good people,” she said finally.  “Little whack, but they don’t deserve this.”

Angel smiled at her.  “That’s not an answer.”

“No, it’s not,” Faith admitted.  “What do you want me to say?  That just being in that waiting room is making me break out in a cold sweat?”  She threw up her hands.  “Fine.  Busted.”

“Faith?”

She turned to see that the woman Sophie had come out of the hospital doors, and was standing a few feet away.  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but can I talk to you for a second?”

Faith studied her for a second, trying to get a read on what she was about to say.  Getting nothing, she shrugged.  “Free country.”

With a quick, nervous glance at Angel, Sophie took a couple steps closer.  “It’s about your father.”

“He’s not my father,” Faith snapped.  She was about to say more, but she caught Angel’s eye.  “We haven’t had the test,” she amended.  “There’s no proof.”

Sophie was quiet for a moment; Faith couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being analyzed.  “You know he believes it’s true.  He’s trying not to, but he’s as sure as I’ve ever seen him about anything.”

Faith could feel the muscles in her jaw tighten.  The worst part about hearing it was that it forced her to admit – at least to herself – that she wouldn’t be upset if it were true.  “What do you want from me, Princess?” she said finally.  “You really think Nate’s up for family bonding right now when Eliot’s hanging on by a thread?”

“Faith.”

She locked eyes with Angel, drawing strength from his presence.  _I can’t do this_ , she thought.  There was too much going on here – too many ties she wasn’t prepared to take on.

It was pointless whining, and she knew Angel knew it.  He expected her to be strong, do the right thing.  And if the right thing meant staying around and dealing with the possibility that Nate Ford was her father, so be it.

She exhaled sharply, turning her attention back to Sophie.  “Sorry.  It’s been a crap couple of days.”

The woman nodded.  “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping my bounds here, but he won’t listen to me.”

“About what?” Faith asked…intrigued in spite of herself.

“Did you know that he had a son?” Sophie asked.  “Sam was seven, when he died.  It broke something inside Nate – he can’t handle being in a hospital without flashing back to that moment, screaming for the doctors to save his son.”

 _Better and better,_ Faith thought.  “And you think I can get through to him?  He barely knows me.”

“You can distract him,” Sophie said.  “Give him something else to think about.”

“You understand where he’s coming from,” Angel said.  Faith glared at him.

“You’re not helping, you know.”

****************************************

Nate finally forced himself to sit down.  Sophie had left, after trying unsuccessfully to convince him to come with her.  “You’re not doing yourself any good here,” she’d said.

She was right, of course, but he couldn’t make himself leave.  Not while Eliot was in an operating room, surrounded by doctors performing invasive surgery to correct injuries that should have by rights killed him hours ago, and oh God he was going to be sick right here.

The flashbacks were almost overwhelming.  His son lying there, motionless, as his doctors surrendered to the inevitable.  _Breaking through the door, into the room, clutching Sam to his chest and trying to force the warmth back into his tiny broken body by sheer force of will._

On some level Nate knew he was being irrational.  Eliot was not like Sam.  Even if Sam had lived, they’d have never been anything alike.

Eliot was still family, however.  Eliot, Parker, Hardison, Sophie…they were all his family, now.  They’d pulled him up from rock bottom and back from the brink time after countless time.  He neededthem, but it was because of that need that he was standing here feeling like he wanted to rip his heart out of his chest all over again.

He’d sworn to himself that his team would never feel what he’d felt that day, but here they were – right back where he’d started.

He heard Faith reenter the waiting room, watched as she strode up to him and collapsed into the chair next to his.   “You don’t look so good there, pops.”

The entirely unsentimental assessment of his condition made Nate smile.  “I don’t like hospitals,” he said.

“Yeah,” Faith said.  “Sophie mentioned something about that.”

Nate blinked, momentarily stunned and angry that Sophie had taken the liberty of talking to Faith about his past.  “I’m fine,” he said, defensively.  “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” she said, grinning at him.  “You’re just as fine as I am about all this.”  She slapped him lightly on the thigh.  “Come on.  You’re going to buy me a cup of crappy hospital coffee.”

*********************************

It was hours later before Hardison reached the hospital. The money he’d had on him had gotten a taxi to take him as far as four blocks from the emergency room.  He’d run the rest of the way.

He’d taken the hostages to the nearest police station reachable by boat, leaving it up to them to come up with whatever communal excuse they could manage to sell.  He’d tried to help, but he suspected a lie covering up something this outrageous would have even given Sophie pause.

The important thing was that the nest was dead.  They’d stopped the drugs, and the kid they’d been hired to rescue in the first place could call his parents to come and take him home.

As he approached the door to the emergency room, Hardison spotted Angel.  “What’s going on?”

The vampire shook his head. “It’s bad.”

“ _How_ bad?”

No answer.  Hardison exhaled sharply, not realizing until that moment that he’d been holding his breath.  “Aw, _hell_ no,” he sighed, and went for the doors.

The glass doors slid open at his approach, but to Hardison’s surprise Parker charged through the opening.  For one brief, horrible moment, he feared the worst had happened.  Then his brain caught up with what was actually happening as she brushed past him, and he realized she had a goal in mind.

Parker was heading straight for Angel, hands jammed into her pockets.

Hardison knew Parker – knew her better than most – and he knew deep in his soul that something really bad was about to go down.  “Parker!”

He made a grab for her and missed, just as she pulled her hands out of her pockets.  The cross necklace he’d given her dangled from her left hand – her stake was gripped tightly in her right.   She lunged for Angel, and everything seemed to shift into slow motion.

“No!” he screamed, as Parker swung the length of wood at the vampire’s chest.  Angel reacted by grabbing her wrists, spinning her around, and wrapping her in a tight hold against his chest.  Hardison skidded to a stop, as Angel’s eyes met his.  “Calm down,” he said, holding his hands up.  “Everybody, just calm down.”

“I am calm,” Angel said.  Parker, on the other hand, struggled like a wild thing – growling as she fought to escape the vampire’s grip.  Twisting slightly, Angel caught hold of the small silver cross, closing it in his fist and jerking it out of her hand.

Hardison’s eyes widened in horror as he saw smoke curl up in lazy spirals from the vampire’s hand.  After waiting a moment to make sure Hardison had seen the effect, he threw the jewelry aside.

“Parker!” Hardison yelled, trying to get the thief’s attention.  “Parker, chill!”  _This is bad,_ he thought.  _Very, very bad._

“What did you do to Eliot?!” Parker snarled, still struggling.  “He was _fine!_ He was _fine_ before I left you with him!   _What did you do to him?!_  You did _something_ , you _hurt_ him…”

Hardison saw Angel’s muscle tense as he tightened his grip on Parker, and fear for his teammate flooded his soul.  “He’d  been dying on his feet for hours,” Angel said, somehow managing to make himself heard over Parker’s rage.  “He would have gone down eventually, with or without me.  He would have gone after that nest with or without me.  He was angry.  He wasn’t thinking.  I just wanted him to admit it to himself.”

Hardison gaped.  “So you just _let_ him beat you with a sledgehammer?!”

Angel nodded. “I killed Lindsey,” he continued. “Someone else pulled the trigger, but I gave the order.  Eliot claimed they weren’t close.  Maybe they weren’t.  But they were brothers.  You can’t just _ignore_ a loss like that, no matter how hard you try.  I knew he was angry, even if he didn’t.  I knew that he’d never let himself grieve if I didn’t make him.  I also knew that, if he let that rage build up, one day he’d lose control.”

******************************************

“I was nineteen,” Faith said, watching the cream swirl in her coffee cup.  “Pretty out of control.”  She kept pausing, waiting for Nate to say something, but he never did.

 _This is stupid,_ she thought, taking a drink.  Confession was good for the soul, but going back over her own sordid history wasn’t going to help Nate forget his own pain. _Just prove to him he doesn’t want to pursue this Daddy-dearest thing._

“Got in a fight with another Slayer.  She stuck a knife in my gut, and threw me off a roof.”  She heard Nate’s quiet intake of breath, and forced herself to keep going.  “I spent the next ten months in a coma.”  She looked up then, met his gaze.  “Even as a Slayer, I should have died.  I still don’t know why I lived.”

Nate smiled gently.  “I’m glad you did.  I wish…”

Faith shook her head, cutting him off.  “Don’t.  Believe me it’s not worth it.  You were on the mark when you said before that you can’t go back and change the past.”

“So how do you go forward?” Nate asked after a long moment.  “Because…honestly, Faith, what I’ve seen of you in the last couple of days doesn’t match up with this person you’re describing.”

“Trust me – it’s been a good couple of days,” Faith said, waving the compliment aside.  “You’re getting to see me in full-on hero mode.  It looks a lot better than it actually is.”

Nate smiled.  “Wow.  You know, I’m going to be very surprised if we’re not related, because you sound an awful lot like me.”

The observation didn’t bother Faith nearly as much as she’d thought it would.  “I did promise you that we’d talk about this once everything was over, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Nate said, “but we don’t have to if you’re not ready.”

Faith was quiet for a few minutes, trying to honestly see if she was ready to do this.  It wasn’t as easy as everybody – except Nate, ironically enough – seemed to think it was.  Nate was exactly the kind of man she’d always dreamed of back when she’d bothered to dream of a father at all.  The thought that she might get her hopes up, only to have them dashed seemed like more than she wanted to get herself into.

_You know he believes it’s true.  He’s trying not to, but he’s as sure as I’ve ever seen him about anything._

Maybe the question wasn’t just about her.  _If you’re really over the whole daddy-thing, maybe you just need to suck it up and put it to rest for his sake.  He’s a good guy – it’s the least you can do._   She realized with a jolt of surprise that she was more comfortable doing it for Nate than she was for herself.

She glanced at the clock on the wall.  “Lab opens at six.  That gives me an hour to explain to you why you don’t want me as a kid.”  She grinned.  “If you still want to do this thing after getting all the fact _s_ , then we can go get your test.”

******************************

Angel still had Parker held tight against him, and Hardison was beginning to sweat despite the cold.  _How long has it been since he ate, anyway?_  The thief had ceased struggling, but Hardison suspected she would go for the vampire again at the slightest opportunity.  He didn’t even know if she’d bought Angel’s bit about doing this all for Eliot’s sake.

“So…we’re all friends then,” he said.  “All on the same side and everything…not hungry or nothing…”

“I’m not going to bite her,” Angel said.  He glanced down at Parker.  “But I do need you both to pay very close attention to me.”

“Hey, all ears here,” Hardison said.  “Man, you got my full attention – ‘specially if there’s no biting involved.”

“Parker?” Angel asked.

Parker growled, but didn’t start struggling again.  Angel seemed to accept it as the best he was going to get, and looked across at Hardison again.

“You got lucky tonight…very lucky.  All of you did – especially Parker.  You need to realize that most times a fight with a vampire ends like this.”  There was a grinding sound of bone on bone, and suddenly the scene in front of Hardison got a whole lot worse.

“Whoa!” he yelled, as the monster who had been Angel a moment earlier, ran a tongue across one fang.  “Whoa!  Just hold on one minute!”

Angel shook his head, and in a blur everything shifted back to normal.  “The fights are one on one, and you lose.  If you’re lucky, you just end up dead.”

 _If we’re not,_ Hardison thought, finishing the idea for Angel… _we end up with a helluva sun allergy._  “All right,” he said out loud, “I get it.  We…get it.  Now let her go, please man.  You’re freaking me out.”

Reaching down, Angel twisted the stake out of Parker’s hand.  “Now that you know vampires are real, you need to know this isn’t some video game.”  He let the thief go with a small shove in Hardison’s direction.

Hardison scrambled to catch Parker, his heart pounding in his chest.

Angel, calm and unruffled, slipped the stake back into an inside pocket of his jacket.  “You need to leave killing them to the professionals.”

Deep down, Hardison agreed with the man, but after everything Angel had done tonight he wasn’t inclined to give the vampire any satisfaction whatsoever.  Especially when he felt how Parker was shaking once he slipped a protective arm around her shoulders.  He couldn’t tell whether the tremors were fear or anger, but either way it made him want to take a shot at Angel himself.

_Consequences be damned._

“C’mon,” he muttered, tugging Parker towards the doors leading back inside the hospital.  Even the waiting room would be better than standing out here with Angel.  At least there they could know what the hell was going on with the people who mattered.

*****************************************

Angel watched them go – two ordinary, frightened, exhausted humans that he’d known barely two days and who had been through _hell_ tonight.

He sighed.

They weren’t quite “helpless” – they’d fought better than most people would have in similar circumstances and survived – but here and now they were close enough.  He’d just driven that point home better than anyone ever could have.

He’d given them good advice, but he maybe he could afford to temper it with a little hope. It had been a long night for all involved.

He wished Buffy were here.  He wished for Wesley, Fred, Lorne, or Gunn.  Any one of them would have been better suited to give this speech than him.

Most of all, however, he suddenly wished for Doyle.  Angel knew that Parker and Hardison probably didn’t notice or care, but he was tired.  He was tired, and sore, but watching them walk away together in their defeat he realized that there was one more thing he could say.    _They’re good people.  They deserve some hope._

“You know, I had the chance to stop being a vampire once.”  As he’d suspected, the statement was just oddenough to get them to stop and look back.

“You can do that?” Parker asked.

Angel shrugged.  “I still would have had to visit the butcher shop on a regular basis.  But all the big weaknesses...sunlight, holy water, staking…wouldn’t have been a problem anymore.  I could have done it.  Apart from the blood, I could have lived like a human.”

“So why didn’t you?” asked Parker, apparently intrigued in spite of herself.

“An old friend of mine asked me the same thing that day.  He told me that I’d earned it.  Told me that it way my reward for trying so hard to redeem myself.  Hell, as a last ditch effort, he reminded me that I could help people in the daytime instead of the night.  What difference would it make?”  Angel smiled sadly and shook his head.  “He cared a lot about me. We hadn’t known each other that long, but he wanted me to take that chance to save myself.  Have to admit, a part of me wanted it too.”  He paused again, remembering.  “But I didn’t. And I’ll tell you what I told Doyle that day.”

He had their attention.   _Good._  He knew now that they needed to hear this, just as much as they’d needed to hear his earlier warning.  With the memory of Doyle making his chest hurt, Angel pressed on.

“The people in the daytime have help.   The whole world is designed for them, so much so that they have no idea what goes on around them after dark.  They don’t see the weak ones lost in the night, or the things that prey on them.  And if I joined them, maybe I’d stop seeing too.   _That’s_ what I told him.”

He made sure he still had their attention, and continued.  “You and your team are the ones that help the people in the daytime.  That’s good.  They need it.   _I_ need it.  Fact is, it’s only because I know that people like you exist that I can stay in the dark and keep fighting.  Save the people in the daytime.  The whole world might be designed for them, but that just means that they have more enemies.  Some of them are just as good at hiding in plain sight as vampires.  There’s always going to be a battlefield.  There’s always a good fight to be fought.  If you keep fighting yours’, I can keep fighting mine.”

There was a long moment, where no one spoke; the only sound was the wind and the distant roaring of cars passing down the street.  Then…

“…masochist,” said Parker, the corners of her mouth lifting very slightly.

Angel shrugged airily.  “You’re not the first to say it.”

Hardison was about to chime in, to take advantage of the apparent truce, when Sophie came running up.  “He’s out of surgery!” she cried, relief and joy suffusing her features with a light completely at odds with the scene she’d interrupted.  “He’s going to live!”

****************************************

They all gathered to hear the news.  Eliot’s doctor, looking as exhausted as Nate had ever seen anyone, confirmed that they’d managed to piece Eliot back together.  “He’s not going home any time soon, however,” the man had said, locking eyes squarely with Nate.  “We’re sending him to ICU for the foreseeable future, and I want you to understand that this is going to be a day by day process.”

Nate caught the subtext, even if no one else had.  He made a mental note to have a private word with the doctor about keeping Eliot heavily sedated for as long as was safe.  He knew that as a team they would do their best to see that their hitter rested and obeyed his doctors, but Nate also knew that Eliot could be…persistent.

The unfortunate drawback of ICU was that only one of them could be with him at a time.  Now that the threat seemed to have lifted, Nate suggested that Sophie take first watch.  He and Faith had unfinished business to attend to, and Parker and Hardison were looking unusually…subdued.

Nate suspected, based on the covert looks Parker kept shooting in Angel’s direction, that something had happened, but now was not the time to deal with it.

Eliot was going to _live_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth comes out on both fronts.

It didn’t take long for Eliot to wake up, which surprised Sophie when she realized exactly how much morphine he’d been given to begin with.  He really did have an amazing resistance to the stuff.

She watched him carefully as he opened his eyes and scanned the room.  She could see the word _hospital_ click into place in his mind after a moment or so.  He then turned his attention to his own condition, and the words _near death_ and _lucky_ clicked into place soon after.

Then, he noticed her, and it took him only a few seconds before her own name seemed to find a place in his beaten, exhausted, medicated mind.  Sophie smiled as recognition dawned. “Hey there,” she said softly.

Eliot swallowed before replying.  “What’s happened?”  His voice was slurred and slow.   “Where..?”

“It’s all right,” Sophie said, trying to soothe him.  “The vampires are dead.  Hardison got the hostages away safely.  We all managed to get out alive, amazingly enough, including you.  And you’re making a truly miraculous recovery.  A fairly good night, all things considered, don’t you think?”

Eliot grimaced.  It was subtle, but the look of disgust was not lost on Sophie.  She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“‘Miraculous.’  Everyone keeps sayin’ that to me.  ‘Miraculous.’”

She sighed.  “No offense, Eliot, but it really is.”

He frowned more deeply this time and shook his head very slightly.  “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Eliot, I sat with you.”  She paused, hating that she had to even say the words.  “You were _dying_ in our arms.  I could feel it.  I think I know a miracle when I see it.”

“No.” Eliot took a deep, shaking breath.  “You don’t.”

Sophie opened her mouth to protest, but stopped almost immediately.  Taking a closer look, she realized that there was something Eliot was holding back, but nevertheless really wanted her to know.

So she asked the question he clearly neededher to ask. “What do you mean?”

“When I was…with Angel…before you guys showed up…we got to talkin’.  About Lindsey.  About me.  He knew Lindsey for a bit, a few years back.  He saw how I was still on my feet, after all the punishment I’d taken, and he said…”

Eliot closed his eyes and swallowed again, apparently unable to continue.  Sophie saw with an unpleasant jolt that his entire body was shaking.  When he was finally able to speak again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“…he said that Lindsey might have done something to me. Something to make me heal faster.  Be stronger.”

Sophie blinked.  “Could he have really done that?”

“Lindsey knew all kinds of twisted crap.”  Eliot scowled again.  “Of course he could.”

Sophie was still confused.  She could clearly see that the thought was upsetting her teammate, but she couldn’t quite understand why.

She finally decided to say as much.  If Eliot wanted to talk, she was more than willing to listen. “Eliot, I…I don’t understand.  If Lindsey did something like that to you…I, I mean, if he _did_ , that might just be the only reason you survivedtonight. By rights, you really should have died.”

“I know.”

“But…if Lindsey did that for you, _provided_ that for you…isn’t that a good thing?”  Sophie bit her lip.  “Eliot, doesn’t that prove that he loved you?”

There was barely any strength left in Eliot’s body, but he still managed to clench his fists.  Sophie was horrified to see that her teammate was genuinely trying not to cry, now.

“No,” he said finally. “It doesn’t.”  He shook his head, looking physically sick. “Lindsey offered that to me, once.  He offered to make me stronger.  Told him no.  Told him that if he ever tried, I’d break his neck.”  He paused.  “I thought that was the _end_ of it!”

He’d almost shouted the last sentence, desperate and angry and exhausted.  Sophie drew back, frightened once again in spite of herself.  She jabbed the button on the morphine drip, because Eliot was working himself into a near frenzy all over again.

She could see him visibly jerk as he felt the drugs enter his system, but after a few impossibly tense moments he relaxed again.  Even after the morphine had forcibly settled him down, the tension lingered in the air between them.  Finally Eliot broke the silence.

“How is everyone?”

Sophie smiled weakly.  “Well, I finally managed to convince Nate to go off with Faith for a little while.  Neither one of them is entirely comfortable being here.  Hardison got back a little while ago, apparently just in time to stop Parker from having a go at Angel.”

Eliot blinked.  “…Parker took a shot at Angel?”

Sophie shrugged.  “She tried.”

Incredible as the idea was, the thought that tiny little Parker had gone after Angel was enough to finally cheer Eliot up some. _Maybe he’s finally gotten used to being part of a team._

“What about the kid?” was his next question.  “Did he make it?”

Sophie nodded. “Hardison left him with the other hostages at the nearest police station.”

Eliot exhaled softly.  “Guess we call this a win, then.”

Sophie nodded again. “Better than I expected, once I got over the news that vampires were real in the first place.”  She paused, before asking the question she suspected was on all their minds. “Eliot, did you… _know_ about vampires before this all happened?”

She got the impression that Eliot was considering his answer very carefully.  “I didn’t know we’d be dealing with vampires on this job,” he said finally.  “But I knew they were real, yeah.  Wolfram and Hart worked with ‘em all the time.  Lindsey worked with ‘em all the time.  He passed along the intel a while back so I didn’t get myself bitten.”  At the look on Sophie’s face, the hitter smiled ruefully.  “It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to put theory into practice.”

“From what Parker tells me, you managed to hold your own,” Sophie told him.  “And then some.”

Lindsey shrugged slightly.  “Good to know.  To be honest, though, most of tonight’s gone fuzzy.  Don’t remember the fine details.  Just…bits.  The hostages.  Parker.  Nate and Faith showing up.   _Angel_.”  His good hand clenched into a fist as he spoke the word.  Sophie bit her lip again.

There was one question she honestly, truly did not want to ask here and now, but the fact of the matter was that if she didn’t ask now she never would, and they’d _really_ be right back where they’d started.

 _Nothing ventured, nothing gained…_ “What did he say to you?  Eliot…I’ve never seen you lose control like you did tonight.”  She paused.  “I never thought I would.”

His jaw tightened.  He didn’t want to answer.  Sophie understood – probably, she suspected, better than most.

Then, to her amazement, he spoke. “Lindsey.”

Sophie’s stomach clenched.  “What did he say?”

Eliot shook his head.  She could see him trying to think of how best to respond, and thinking _hard_.  Then:

“Nothing that probably wasn’t true.”

Sophie found that she did not know how to reply to that.  She loved Eliot to death and beyond, just like she loved all her team, but when all was said and done she knew almost nothing about the man, and even less about his brother.  How could she honestly comment on a man she’d never known to the man who’d probably known him best?

“We weren’t close.”

Sophie looked up, surprised that Eliot had chosen to speak again without being prompted, and even more that he’d essentially responded directly to her thoughts.

“We weren’t,” Eliot insisted.  He wasn’t looking at her anymore.  He was staring off into space with glassy, unfocused eyes.  Sophie knew that his thousand-yard stare was only partially due to the morphine.  “Never.  Especially after he went over to Wolfram and Hart.  I knew he did stuff for them, stuff that would put him on par with some of the worst scum we’ve ever taken out.”

His expression was frighteningly grim.  “Time was, back at the start, I’d even wonder when we were gonna get hired to take him down a peg.  I would’ve been first in line.”

“Then why did you do all of this?” Sophie interjected.  They had to know.   _She_ had to know.  “Eliot, you…you scared me, tonight.  You nearly _died_.  Do you…do you know what it was like, having to just _sit_ there and watch Nate fall apart?  Do you know what it was like _watching_ you _die?_ ” She swallowed hard, eyes suddenly burning with unshed tears.

“I want to know why the mockery of a brother you never really loved set you off like that!  After tonight, I think you owe us that much, at least!”  She could feel herself losing control, which was not acceptable.  Not even here, not even now.  Eliot had tensed at her sudden eruption, muscles as taught as a whipcord.

He didn’t want to talk, and why would he?  Why _should_ he talk here, now, when he was hooked up to so many tubes and machines and monitors that she barely recognized him?  Sophie wished suddenly that Nate had somehow found it in himself to come in first instead.  He’d have probably lost control even quicker than she had, but Eliot would have expected it from Nate.

Sophie Devereaux slipped the leash back on her real self, her real emotions, and dragged them back behind the mask.  Eliot needed Sophie, not the woman who was hidden deep inside her soul – the woman who was emotional and blubbering, and falling all to pieces.

She took a deep breath, and slowly let it out.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, once she trusted her voice not to betray her again.  “I know…I know you must be tired.  It’s just…it’s been a long night.  I’m just…”

“I was seven.”

She looked up.  Eliot was still refusing to meet her gaze, still looking back to some distant time and place.  She didn’t speak, knowing somehow Eliot wouldn’t hear her if she did.

“We didn’t have a lot. No shoes, no toilet, six of us kids in one room, and come flu season it was down to four.  I was seven when they took the house.” He smiled bitterly.  “Lindsey’d tell the story as his own bit of justification whenever he screwed someone over afterwards.  I never could.”

“Why?”

He swallowed painfully, and she could see that his eyes were suddenly over bright.  It was as unfamiliar a look as the blind, animal rage she’d seen the night before.  In its own way, it was also more frightening.  “I wasn’t there.  I wasn’t there when they had dad sign the house over.  No one even told me it was happening.  Lindsey just sent me off on some…friggin’ busy work that day.  Something that would keep me out of the way while we lost everything.”  He chuckled bitterly.  “Don’t even remember what it was, now.”

“Why would he do that?”

Another bitter smile.  “Smashin’ the lawyer’s skull in with a rock would have looked bad.”  He noticed Sophie’s raised eyebrows and added, “I was a violent little brat when I was young.”

This time, Sophie managed to return the smile.  “I don’t believe that.”   _I really don’t._

“No one does.  ‘S how I like it.”  He shook his head dazedly.  “When I got back, saw ‘em standing by the side of the road, locked out of our own house…I couldn’t handle it.  I kicked.  I screamed.  I couldn’t think.  Didn’t think.  Just wanted to hurt someone like they’d hurt me.  That’s how it always was, back then.”

He took a breath, apparently steadying himself to continue.  “I went for one of the guys clearing out our house.  Seven years old, half starved little brat, but I went for him.  Lindsey stopped me.”

“How?”  After what she’d seen today, she wondered how anyone could stop Eliot when such a rage took over.  All of them together barely had, in the end, and she suspected that was partly because he’d been on the verge of death in any case.

Eliot smiled, almost…nostalgically.  “He jumped me.  We both went down.  I was angry.  I wanted to hurt someone.  And hey, Lindsey had just given me an excuse.”  He paused.  “That’s what I told myself later.”

Sophie found that she was holding her breath.  Eliot actually laughed, although it quickly turned into a wracking cough that set a few of his monitors beeping.  Sophie reflexively jabbed the button on the morphine drip, and waited for the drugs to take effect.

They did, far more quickly than she expected.  All this conversation was weakening him all over again.  She should leave, she _knew_ , but as soon as he’d relaxed Eliot started talking again.  He seemed to know, now, just as she did, that if he didn’t tell his story now then he never would.

“He beat the crap out of me.  He gave as good as I gave him, with interest to spare.  When it was all said and done, I was the one laid out on the ground with my twin brother sitting on me.  I’d never seen him look so pissed.  He grabbed me, hauled me back up, glared at me so fierce I started shaking.  Lindsey was never the one to lose his temper.  Not until that moment.”

Eliot closed his eyes, thinking, reflecting… _remembering._  “Dragged me behind our old house, sat me down, and told me, ‘You can’t control this.  You can’t control the people stepping on us like we don’t matter.  You can’t control the people taking our lives away.  You can’t even control dad.  He’s the one who let it happen.  What you need to control isn’t out there. It’s in here.’”   Weakly, Eliot raised a hand and tapped his chest, just once.

Sophie realized that the mantra was familiar.  She’d heard him give essentially this same speech once before in a dimly lit gymnasium.  She’d been looking up at him, and he’d been looking down at her, sweaty and tired but nevertheless impossibly _peaceful_.

“He told you that?” she whispered.  Eliot nodded.

“I thought about what he said to me that day for a long time.  For years, I tried to work out where he was coming from.  Wasn’t until he got that job in the mailing room and got scooped up by Wolfram and Hart that I figured it out.  When you can’t control yourself, you can’t control anything.  Other people do it for you.  After everything that happened that day, I knew I never wanted that to happen again.”

Sophie nodded.  “One way or another, Eliot…I think that’s how we all ended up here today.”

“Guess so.”  He sighed.  “We never saw each other much after that.  Twice a year, maybe, if I’d been unlucky...last time I saw him was about five years ago.”

Sophie remembered something Hardison had mentioned.  “That would have been about the time he died, from what we know.”

Eliot nodded.  “Should’ve known something was up that night,” he said softly.  “He...wasn’t acting like himself.  Maybe he knew something was about to happen.”

“And he came to see you?”

Thanks to the morphine, Eliot managed to shrug.  “He was my brother.”

***************************************

He’d found Lindsey sitting in front of his motel room that night – scruffier and stranger than Eliot had ever seen him, even _without_ considering the bizarre black tattoos his twin had covered himself with from neck to foot.

Eliot knew he should have known that something was wrong then.  His brother had looked _happy_.  Adult Lindsey had never really looked happy before that day – just content or satisfied, and there _was_ a difference.  It had been so long, Eliot had forgotten what the emotion looked like on him.

Lindsey had greeted him with an easy affection, like the last time they’d seen each other hadn’t been in the middle of war torn Croatia.  He’d passed over a bag filled with Styrofoam boxes of Chinese food, skillfully dodging Eliot’s questions – _where the hell have you been, what the hell are you doing here, what the hell did you_ do _to yourself?_

_“What, I can’t just stop by to check on my twin brother?”_

_“You keep me out of jail.  I help you suck up to your bosses.  That’s how we work.  We don’t do..._ Chinese.”

_“Well, I think we should start.”_

In any case, food was food and he’d had learned long ago not to be too picky about it.   Combined with Lindsey’s sudden and inexplicable friendliness,it had all somehow worked to help dissolve some of the chilliness and distance that had grown up between them over the years…if only for a while.  Halfway through the meal, they had been talking like how Eliot had always imagined real brothers talked to one another – about their lives, about their thoughts, about one another, and if the whole thing hadn’t been so _pleasant_ he told himself that he would have been more suspicious.

They’d finished the meal, and somehow they’d wound up going out for drinks afterwards.  Eliot had allowed himself to get drunk.  Neither he nor Lindsey were the type to let themselves get drunk, but that night they had.  It was...an occasion.  Besides, he’d only been half-sure by the end of the fourth round that he wasn’t dreaming the whole thing anyway.

The alcohol had further dissolved the barriers between them.  Talk had turned…sentimental.

_“We’ve never really been close, have we?”_

_“Not since you sold your soul.”_

_“I’ve found souls to be overrated, to be honest.  I do just fine.”_

Regrets, hopes, fears...and, dammit, he _should_ have paid attention.  He shouldhave known that something was wrong.  Twins were _supposed_ to know this sort of thing, weren’t they?

_“You know, you give me crap about working for Wolfram and Hart, but you’re the one who goes out there to get shot and stabbed all the time.  I really think you should reconsider which one of us is the crazy twin, to be honest.”_

_“I do all right.”_

_“So far.  But you know...Eliot...I’ve got connections.  I can pull some strings. Just say the word, and I can fix...”_

_“If I_ ever _catch you putting any freaky mojo on me, Linds,  I’ll break your neck.”_

_“Heh.  Duly noted, little brother.”_

_“Five...damn..._ minutes _.”_

_“I just...I worry about you sometimes.”_

_“Since when?!”_

_“Since I kicked your ass, dragged you behind our house, sat you down, and told you the facts of life...you remember, don’t you?  What I told you that day?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Good.  Don’t forget.  Just...don’t.”_

_“...I won’t.”_

They’d drunk until last call, and then stumbled back to Eliot’s motel room.  They’d passed out together because there was only one bed in the room, and by that point Eliot just wasn’t up for making his twin brother sleep on the floor.

He’d woken in the morning with a splitting headache, and Lindsey nowhere to be found.   Assuming that he’d gotten called into work, or ducked away somewhere in search of a mystical hangover cure, or just fled in memory of the bizarre _closeness_ of the night before, Eliot hadn’t given the matter much thought.

And that had been that.

He hadn’t seen Lindsey since.

He’d never see Lindsey again.

Sophie was still sitting beside him, watching him carefully but saying nothing.  Eliot loved her for that.  The sudden... _torrent_ of memories had hit his tired mind like a freight train.  He told himself that it was just because he’d had a long night, nearly died twice, fought for his life and the lives of his team, and had to deal with that _vampire_ all throughout that he was suddenly emotionally fragile enough to have to hold back tears.

 _You weren’t close_ , he reminded himself.

This time, it did no good.  For one night, one last night, they’d been proper brothers.  That, it seemed, had been enough.

He bit back the tears and the emotion.  He knew he failed, but he also knew that Sophie wouldn’t tell the others.  If the team somehow found out, they’d never mention.  They let him keep his secrets, and he loved them for it.

Sophie finally broke the silence and freed him from the chains of his own distant memories. “You should try to sleep,” she said softly, reaching out and attempting to smooth the blankets. Despite the tension lying heavy in the room, she managed to smile at him.  It was a normal, patently _Sophie_ smile.  “After all, Hardison and Parker are chewing at the bit to be able to see you.”

The thought of his team...even and especially Hardison and Parker...made Eliot smile.  Despite that, he knew firsthand how tiring they could be, even when they didn’t want to be.

So, nodding slightly, Eliot closed his eyes and tried at last to sleep.

Sophie stayed with him until he did.

***********************************************

Angel had left almost immediately, heading back to Los Angeles.  Nate suspected Faith was the only one sorry to see him go.

Faith agreed to stay around until their test results came in.  Nate had pointed out that it could take as long as ten days.  “Got no place better to be,” had been her reply.

At his insistence, she moved from the suite at the Seaport, into his apartment over McCrory’s.  She’d refused to come with him to the hospital, on his daily visits to watch over Eliot, but he appreciated the fact that she was home every night when he returned.

 _Watching my flat screen and blowing out my stereo speakers,_ he thought ruefully, wondering on an almost daily basis what kind of eardrum shattering music he would be treated to when he finally walked through his door.

“You wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Eliot had said during one visit.  He was still pale and weak, but he was following instructions, and the doctors were finally starting to talk about upgrading his condition.

Nate shrugged.  “The tests aren’t in.  We still don’t know for sure.”

“Blood will out,” was all Eliot would say.

He stayed at his teammate’s side, until Hardison came in to relieve him.  Eliot had fallen asleep by that point – a more natural sleep than he’d managed up until this point, without the aid of his nighttime medications.  Which was fine by Hardison – as long as the hospital had a steady wi-fi signal, the hacker was good for the night.

Nate was surprised to see Faith waiting for him as he left the hospital – perched on the low wall that bordered the street-side perimeter of the front lawn.  Her legs were swinging back and forth, lightly kicking at the stone surface.  “Evenin’, pops!” she called as soon as she caught sight of him.

“So I’m really going to be a ‘pops’?” he asked, stopping beside her.  “Not ‘dad’?”

Faith grinned at him, her dark eyes shining with mischief.  “I don’t think you want ‘daddy’, under the circumstances.”

Nate had to concede the point.  A young woman like Faith calling him “daddy” was going to raise all the wrong images.  “So…” he said, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Faith raised her right hand, showing an official-looking white envelope.  She waved it significantly in his direction.

 _Here we go,_ Nate thought, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest.  He reached out and plucked the envelope from her fingers.  “You didn’t open it?” he asked, noticing that the seal was intact.

Faith shrugged.  “Figured we should do it together.”  She paused.  “How’s Eliot?”

Nate dug his fingernail under the edge of the envelope, and tore.  “Good,” he said, answering Faith’s question.  “He’s behaving.”  He looked up, meeting her eyes.  “You could visit him, you know.  He’s been asking about you.”

“He has?”

Nate realized that he didn’t like the sudden look of interest in her eyes.  “Ah…do me a favor,” he said.  “Don’t.  Just…don’t.”

Faith laughed at his discomfort.  “You haven’t even gotten that envelope open, and you’re already trying to dictate my love life?”

“Just…don’t,” Nate repeated, only half-joking.  He didn’t seriously believe that anything would happen between Faith and his hitter, but on the off-chance he was wrong…

To distract himself, he pulled the sheet of paper out and unfolded it.  _Mr. Nathan Ford…Ms. Faith Lehane…blood drawn…results…_   He inhaled sharply, scanning the critical piece of information.

Laughing, Faith reached out and snatched the sheet of paper away from him.  “Bet you’re a load of fun to play poker with,” she said.  He watched as she read, seeing the complicated emotions play across her face when she read the truth.

“Well.”  She wouldn’t look at him right away, instead making a show of re-folding and re-creasing the paper.  “Now we know.”

Hardly daring to breathe, Nate reached out and took the document away from her.  “Faith?”

Startled at the sound of his voice, Faith met his gaze.  “It’s all good,” she said, reading the worry in his own expression.  “Really.  Just…overwhelming, yanno?”

He nodded.  “Ah…I don’t even know what to say,” he managed at last.  “Congratulations seems so self-absorbed.”

That got him a small smile, at least.  “You’re happy then?” she asked, and Nate suddenly saw a glimpse of the lost little girl he’d never had a chance to know.

“Oh yes,” he said, nodding – even as his heart ached for all the years they’d never be able to recover.  “Very happy.”

She studied him for a long moment – gauging the truth of what he’d said, he was certain.  Finally she slid off the wall and bounced to a stop beside him, threading her arm through his.  “Well then – pops – how about you buy your little girl a steak?”


End file.
